 Welcome to Mind Your Business ! Consider this your weekly guide to understanding what’s happening in the worlds of economics, business and finance. By Peter Armstrong | | |  | The Bank of Canada will announce its latest interest policy on Wednesday. (Jo Panuwat D/Shutterstock) | | | The Bank of Canada will dominate news again this week. It's widely expected to hold steady and leave interest rates unchanged.
The big question is whether the central bank will give any hints about where it sees rates going from here.
Last week, the chair of the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, appeared pleased with the amount of progress he's seen on the inflation front. But he didn't declare victory, either.
"Given the uncertainties and risks, and how far we have come, the committee is proceeding carefully," said Fed chair Jerome Powell.
The Wall Street Journal took that as a sign that Powell will extend the pause in interest rate hikes. Bloomberg's headline said he had decided to leave the door open to another hike.
I suppose they're both right.
And we should probably brace for something similar from the Bank of Canada.
As we have discussed at length, the economy has been sending decidedly mixed signals. Job growth came in hot in September while GDP growth was flat (though not quite negative).
So, all eyes were on CPI last week. And inflation sure appears to be moving back to target. | | |  | | | That chart surely provoked a heaving sigh of relief in households and boardrooms across the country.
Price growth is moderating. Grocery prices are still way too high, but also way down from their peak. And as you can see, overall inflation decelerated even though gasoline was up 7.5 per cent year over year.
Even the Bank of Canada's closely watched core measures showed clear improvement.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
The economic data has repeatedly surprised us over these past few years. And weary economists are warning we need to be patient.
Derek Holt, senior economist with CIBC, says the central bank ought to be patient as well.
"To have faith that this is the beginning of a trend their models have hoped to see for so long would place grossly excessive faith in those models that have not worked well to date. So for now, take the good news, but continue to tread very carefully," wrote Holt in a note to clients.
Holt says there remain some concerning data points under the surface.
"The 3-month moving average including revisions is at 3% that, while the lowest since November 2021, remains above the BoC’s 2% headline target. Cooler, but not cool, and very volatile data," he wrote.
Indeed, the headline rate is very encouraging. The three-month average, as highlighted here, is not. | | |  | | | The Bank of Canada's decision comes this week with the added benefit of its Monetary Policy Report, a giant tome filled with forecasts and charts and reams of data.
That should help shine some light on the road ahead. But don't get to thinking it will give us a clear set of instructions for the next year or so.
It wasn't that long ago that Fed chair Powell was lamenting the uncertain nature of the economy.
"As is often the case," he told a group of bankers gathered at Jackson Hole, Wyo. "We are navigating by the stars under cloudy skies."
It's still cloudy, but this week, with any luck, the stars will shine a touch brighter.
What do you think is going to happen?
As always, send me a note.
My email is: peterarmstrong@cbc.ca | | |  | | The Bank of Canada will announce its latest interest rate policy on Wednesday. Most economists believe the bank will leave rates unchanged. | | | | | | U.S. GDP numbers will be released on Thursday. So far this year, the American economy has posted stronger than expected results. | | | | | | We'll get a deep dive into the state of Canada's labour market on Thursday. Statistics Canada will release the Survey of Employment, Payroll and Hours, which will look at jobs data from August. | | | | | Three things to read, watch and listen to this week | | |  | Silver Dollar Road is out this week. (Prime) | | | 1. A tale of greed, money and control | | | Almost no one has ever heard of Silver Dollar Road or the Reels family.
The story is both shocking and entirely predictable. At every stage you will find yourself shaking your head in disbelief, even as you nod along, as though you knew this was what would happen.
The documentary premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was based on reporting done by the incredible team at Pro Publica.
It's narrated by Mamie Reels Ellison, the family matriarch who tried desperately to keep land that had been in her family for generations.
"Their great-grandfather had bought the land a hundred years earlier, when he was a generation removed from slavery," wrote Lizzie Presser in Pro Publica back in 2019.
The land, 65 marshy acres that ran along Silver Dollar Road in central North Carolina, had become a magical place for the local Black community.
"During the later years of racial-segregation laws, the land was home to the only beach in the county that welcomed Black families. 'It’s our own little Black country club,' Melvin and Licurtis’s sister Mamie liked to say,'" wrote Presser.
In the film trailer, Mamie says on the night her great-grandfather died, he said, "Whatever you do, don't let the white man have my land."
Guess what happened?
One distant family member used some legal loopholes to claim part of the property and promptly sold it to developers.
Those developers evicted the Reels family and had two members tossed in jail for an incredible eight years on contempt charges.
The story is infuriating but also a powerful tale of a family that refuses to give in.
It premiers on Prime Video on Thursday.
Check out the trailer for Silver Dollar Road here.
Check out the Pro Publica piece the movie is based on here. | | | 2. Plato's Cave in the digital world | | | It takes a special kind of talent to tie together threads like Plato's cave, Kierkegaard and social media megastar MrBeast.
In fact, I think the only person even remotely equipped to write a piece like thus is the amazing Kyla Scanlon.
Plato's Cave is an allegory that tries to help us better understand perception. In the story, a group of prisoners live in a cave and have never ventured outside. They see shadows dancing on the wall of the cave and come to believe those shadows are reality.
Scanlon zooms out and wonders if that same allegory can be applied to modern technology.
"[I] was also just thinking about how social media and digital tech/screens represent Plato's Cave in modern life, abstracted into technology but we remain trapped, transfixed, watching, always watching, possessed in trance by a spectacle," she muses.
With that, she veers off into the universe of MrBeast. He's a YouTube star who, generally speaking, gives away thousands of dollars in cash to random people.
Forbes says he earned $54 million last year alone. Scanlon says he has done that by presenting his own sort of shadows on the digital wall.
"He's living this illusion of reality that only he exists in, but millions and millions of people end up consuming. It can feel really disorienting to see ... this giant smile, but he knows that he has to do that because of how the algorithm rewards it. The videos themselves are about relishing in opulence, not necessarily enjoying it, but just… showing it," she says.
I love Scanlon's brain and how she sees the world. This is quite a departure from her usual fare of dissecting the bond markets or central bank decisions.
But it's fascinating, smart and fun.
Check out the video here.
Read her newsletter here. | | | 3. Whose business is identity theft? | | | This story is awful. I debated writing about it but I think as terrible as the subject matter is, it's a conversation we need to have.
Wired magazine has a spectacularly well-reported piece looking at the bizarre tale of Melissa Trixie Watt from Vernon, B.C.
"Fake profiles impersonating Watt had been popping up on KinkD, FetLife and OkCupid for the past four years. At times, late-night texts and calls poured in from men hunting for explicit photos or a hookup," wrote Lindsay Jones in Wired.
In 2021, Watt received a text message from someone who had been chatting with her fake profile. The person said he was considering driving to Vernon to see her.
Watt asked that person to send a screenshot of the conversation he had with her impersonator. The details were horrifying, including offers of rough sex and sexual assault.
Watt reached out to OkCupid, a dating site and asked that the fake profile be taken down.
"But the company refused to tell her who had created the profile and said it needed authority from the police to release that information," wrote Jones.
Watt went to the police, but she was told "no crime had been committed because she hadn’t been naked in any of the photos."
Watt refused to relent and pushed the police for more. She filed her own court motion and eventually convinced police to submit a judicial order telling the websites to take down the fakes and provide details about who had created them.
It was an ex-boyfriend who was eventually charged and pled guilty.
The story is terrifying in that it exposes how little control we have over our online profiles and fakes. And more so, it shows just how little the companies involved are willing to do to help.
This is not a new problem, and yet people like Watt have to jump through endless hoops to regain control over their own likeness.
This is obviously a huge societal issue. But I think it's a business one as well.
What do you think?
Read the Wired piece here. | | | How the economy looks beyond Bay Street | | | Who benefits from higher rates? | | | I've had an idea turning around in my head for a while now. As rates rise, what sort of a windfall is this for savers?
As usual, smarter people than me had an answer already.
The good people at the wonderful publication The Hub have a piece this week by Trevor Tombe, professor of economics at the University of Calgary, looking at precisely this issue.
The headline cuts straight to the core of the question: "As rates rise, old people are doing better and young people are doing worse."
The piece is chock-a-block full of fascinating stats and wonderful charts. | | |  | Tombe says the changes in interest rates are roughly comparable to a four per cent tax on the disposable incomes of those under 35 and a nearly seven per cent subsidy for those over 65.
"Net of higher interest earnings, those under 45 collectively paid over $1.6 billion more. Those over 65, meanwhile, received $1.6 billion per month more," he wrote.
Check out the piece, it's really great. And bookmark The Hub — the site is a steady stream of smart content from some of the biggest brains in the country.
What do you think?
Drop me a line at peterarmstrong@cbc.ca. | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
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