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| Subject: Socialist basket-case Canada: Nation of 36 million owes $4.4 trillion, triple economy’s size Tue Oct 25, 2016 5:05 am | |
| Canada’s debt, swelled by a decade-long housing boom to almost triple the size of its economy, is drawing increasing concern from an international banking community that says it threatens growth and financial stability.
The combined debt of Canadian governments, companies and households reached $4.4 trillion in the first quarter, or 288 percent of gross domestic product, exceeding the same gauge for the U.S., the U.K. and Italy, according to the Bank for International Settlements. While Canada boasts the lowest government debt load among Group-of-Seven countries, household debt is the highest of its peers, the Basel, Switzerland-based BIS said last month in its quarterly report. In September, Statistics Canadareported household liabilities rose to 100.5 percent of GDP, exceeding the size of its economy for the first time.
Canada was the only developed country showing early signs of stress in its domestic banking system amid “unusually high” credit growth relative to GDP, the BIS said. “This debt overhang represents one thing and one thing only: a pervasive constraint on Canada’s economic growth potential,” David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc. said by phone from Toronto. “When you get to levels on total debt that makes even the Italians blush, you know you’re in a straitjacket.”
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