Juggling Dynamite

There was a massive surprise in the latest Canadian employment report with the economy adding about 290,000 jobs last month. While welcoming the dramatic surprise, Frances Donald, chief economist at Manulife Investment Management, says we shouldn’t feel too comfortable because it remains a very painful labour market.  She wonders how many jobs are possibly being propped up by aid and essentially on “palliative care”.    Here is a direct video link.

For a review of the US jobs report today see this direct audio link of Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO and Chief Strategist at Quill Intelligence LLC, on Bloomberg this morning.

Speculative hype and hope aside, spread numbers are illuminating.

Hedgeye president Michael Blum explores how various governments around the world are dealing with COVID-19 lockdown policies to date and the status of their respective reopening plans going forward. Here is a direct video link.

Providing equal socio-economic opportunity and pay for equal work to all is the most effective prosperity ‘stimulus’ we can deploy as a nation; and we need this now more than ever.

It is important for Canadians to understand our own history of systemic discrimination against indigenous and other people of colour, as well as other minority groups. David Austin is one of the most articulate historians on the topic of race in Canada.

Racial conflict and the Black Power movement of the 1960s have long been seen as American phenomena, but in 1968, Montreal’s black activists rose up in protest against racial discrimination and exclusion. Their struggle is documented in David Austin’s book “Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex and Security in Sixties Montreal. ” David Austin sits down with Piya Chattopadhyay for a feature interview on Canada’s history of black radicalism. Here is a direct video link.