A roundup on the credit crunch
December 6th, 2008 | Published in World | View blog reactions
I refuse to use the word “recession”, as I am in Canada at the moment!
However, as one of the major importers (if not the major) of Canadian products and services is the USA – therefore, their recession is starting to affect the Canadian economy, even though Canadian banks fared pretty well during the hot times of the financial meltdown. In the last month, more than 70,000 jobs were lost in Canada, though Ontario had the lion share of job losses, and economists are suggesting that an economic stimulus package is urgently needed – something that, as the current unrest in the Canadian Parliament suggests, is unlikely to come any time soon. I think “unrest” really is the only word that can describe what happened recently in Canadian politics – and its possibly heavy consequences.
Anyway, while working on another post and doing my usual news reading, I encountered more interesting news, and takes, about the current global crisis.
For instance, I found out that the most recent data suggest that almost 600,000 jobs were lost in the month of November in the United States. At the same time, many prospective retirees find themselves stranded and having to look for work in a suddenly flooded labour market.
On the other hand, some countries with stricter banking regulations are faring quite well in the midst of the financial crisis – and some of these are places you would not expect to make a profit at times of general turmoil.
Also, this might be a time for small businesses and non-profits to look into spending their money in a smarter way – protecting the human resources they run on, and saving on other costs that can be completely avoided: one way of doing this would be to convert to using open source software, while retaining or recruiting a workforce able to work with, and adapt to, a variety of software platforms.
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