Some time ago, Deutsche Bank's chief international economist, Torsten Slok, presented several charts which showed that "Canada is in serious trouble" mostly as a result of its overreliance on its frothy, bubbly housing sector, but also due to the fact that unlike the US, the average household had failed to reduce its debt load in time.
Heading into today's meeting with a smorgasbord of 'relatively' good data recently, Governor Poloz had the perfect excuse to raise rates (for the first time since 2010) and tamp down the firey bubble in home prices. Not a total surprise, given hawkish comments from BOC officials in recent weeks, but the Loonie is surging on the hike but CAD stocks (which were rallying into the decision) are limping lower.
A lot changed over the past 4 days, starting with Draghi's unexpectedly hawkish speech earlier this week (subsequent ECB clarification notwithstanding), followed by a barrage of hawkish Fed speakers - including Yellen - all of whom warned that risk assets are overvalued, then the heads of the BOE and BOC, who also came out surprisingly hawkish and warned rates hikes are coming, and finally the conclusion of the ECB's forum in Sintra, where the hawkishness was palpable. In short: coordinated global central bank tightening, or at least jawboning.
Two weeks ago, a key China-linked concern that made headlines back in 2013 and 2014 reemerged after an extensive analysis by Reuters reporter Engen Tham found that China's "ghost collateral" problem, or collateral that was either rehypothecated between two or more loans, or simply did not exist, had not only not gone away but was still as prevalent as ever if not worse.
Amid Poloz-described "unsustainable prices" in various cities, and just days after the collapse of Canadian mortgage lender Home Capital Group and our discussion of the dire state of Canadian savers (and their record household debt), Moodys has cut the ratings on six of Canada's largest banks because of "ongoing concerns that expanding levels of private-sector debt could weaken asset quality in the future."