Current home prices in Canada can’t be justified if medium-term interest rates stay elevated, a former Bank of Canada official said, underscoring the risk to one of the country’s most important sectors, Bloomberg News reported. Paul Beaudry, who spent four years on the central bank’s rate-setting committee, said the outlook for the housing market remains highly dependent not only on the policy rate, but on longer-term fixed rates. If they don’t come down, “then it becomes much more difficult to support these valuations,” he said on BNN Bloomberg Television.
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North America
Resources Per Country
- Anguilla
- Bahamas
- Barbados
- Belize
- Bermuda
- British Virgin Islands
- Canada
- Cayman Islands
- Costa Rica
- Cuba
- Dominica
- Dominican Republic
- El Salvador
- Grenada
- Guadeloupe
- Guatemala
- Haiti
- Honduras
- Jamaica
- Mexico
- Montserrat
- Netherlands Antilles
- Panama
- Puerto Rico
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
- Saint Lucia
- Trinidad and Tobago
- Turks and Caicos Islands
- United States
- United States Virgin Islands
Authorities arrested disgraced crypto hedge fund co-founder Su Zhu Friday, the latest detainment of a star from the crypto industry’s last bull cycle, YahooFinance.com reported. Singaporean authorities apprehended Su Zhu, 36, Friday afternoon at the country’s Changi Airport while he was attempting to leave the country. Singaporean courts placed a “committal order” against him according to Teneo, the court-appointed joint liquidators in the bankruptcy for Zhu’s firm, Three Arrows Capital Ltd. The court order, placed on Sept.
The Canadian economy rebounded slightly last month but still saw little growth, backing a case for the central bank to keep rates on hold despite inflation remaining elevated, Bloomberg News reported. Preliminary data suggest gross domestic product edged up 0.1% in August, Statistics Canada reported Friday in Ottawa, as declines in the retail and oil and gas industries partly offset increases in the wholesale and finance sectors. That followed a flat GDP reading in July, which missed expectations for a 0.1% increase in a Bloomberg survey.
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Mexico’s central bank kept interest rates unchanged for a fourth straight meeting and increased its inflation projections for next year, a sign that borrowing costs could stay higher for longer, Bloomberg News reported. Banxico, as the central bank is known, voted to hold the key rate at 11.25% on Thursday, matching the forecasts of all 23 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
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Ebix Inc. Chief Executive Officer Robin Raina received a $1.8 million bonus last week, even as a Sept. 30 deadline looms for the company to repay a loan of more than $600 million to a syndicate of US banks without having the cash on hand, Bloomberg News reported. Ebix, based in Johns Creek, Ga., disclosed the bonus in a regulatory filing Monday. It said that $1.2 million of the bonus was paid on Sept. 19, the day the board awarded it to Raina. The remainder will be paid in October, according to the filing.
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Canada’s banking regulator said he’s concerned about the prevalence of ultra-long mortgages and that his agency is working with lenders to stem the ubiquity of such loans, Bloomberg News reported. The country’s banks have about C$250 billion ($185 billion) of mortgages with amortization periods — the length of time permitted to pay off the loan — that sit at 35 years or longer, according to Peter Routledge, the superintendent of financial institutions.
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Burford Capital said it would be seeking court permission to begin attaching Argentine assets within weeks to satisfy a $16 billion judgment, saying it was clear that the South American nation had “no intention” of paying, Bloomberg News reported. In a letter Friday to US District Judge Loretta Preska in New York, London-based Burford said it intended to ask her to set Oct. 16 as the date it can begin efforts to execute the judgment and attach assets. Preska earlier this month ordered Argentina to pay the award over its 2012 expropriation of foreign investment in oil company YPF SA.
The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony said Thursday that it had filed for bankruptcy just days after canceling its 2023-24 season, leaving dozens of musicians and staff facing an uncertain future, the Global and Mail reported. The 78-year-old Southern Ontario symphony said earlier this week that it needed to raise $2-million immediately in order to keep operating, acknowledging that insolvency was a possible outcome. The organization confirmed it had filed for bankruptcy in a press release late Thursday afternoon.
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Mexico's headline inflation eased in the first half of September, official data showed on Friday, with the president calling on the central bank to focus on promoting economic growth given the improving inflation data, Reuters reported. Headline inflation in Latin America's second-largest economy hit 4.44% in the 12 months through early September, down from 4.64% at the end of August, data from statistics agency INEGI showed.
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Canadian consumers appear to be quickly rolling back their spending as the Bank of Canada’s higher interest rates start to bite into more household budgets, Bloomberg News reported. Receipts for retailers dropped 0.3% in August, the first decline since March, according to an advance estimate from Statistics Canada released Friday. That followed a 0.3% increase a month earlier, which missed the median estimate of 0.4% in a Bloomberg survey. Sales rose in seven of the nine subsectors in July, and were led by increases at food and beverage retailers.
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