Household debt is at a record high relative to assets in the United States, according to Gluskin Sheff Chief Economist & Strategist David A. Rosenberg. As can be seen from the chart below (taken from a recent Rosenberg research note), the household debt-to-asset ratio is now 21.0%, compared to prior ...

When Margaret Atwood's non-fiction book Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth was published last fall, the timely contribution to the Massey Lectures really struck a chord with readers all over the world thanks to its prescient subject matter: debt. Now, the National Film Board of Canada has announced it ...

It was interesting to hear the always-estimable Rick MacInnes-Rae interview Robert Hirsch on CBC national this past Sunday. Rick is a steady and reassuring voice on foreign policy and big issues, and so the fact he was interviewing Hirsch, the author of the key report on Peak Oil,  the aptly-named ...

Down south, the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan economic analysis organization, revealed that Barack Obama's budget proposals would result in a $9.3 trillion deficit. That's a huge difference from the $2.3 trillion shortfall the new administration has expected it would create.

The price of gold has rebounded as the financial crisis drags on but the process of consolidating the weak with the strong is well advanced. How many more big names are left to implode and fuel further gains in the price of gold? The supply is dwindling it would seem.

An IMF Working Paper released in September sheds some light on banking crises. In Systemic Banking Crises: A New Database, authors Luc Laeven and Fabien Valencia present a comprehensive data base on the banking crises that have occurred around the world in recent decades.

The 25% plunge last week in the Baltic Dry index is not good news for those hoping for a mild recession in the global economy. The index measures the cost of shipping raw materials by ocean tanker and is considered a leading indicator of the direction of the world economy. ...