Stephen Poloz sells international bankers on best-case scenarios + MORE Oct 11th

(Justin Tang/CP)

LIMA, Peru — Some policy makers think it is their job to worry. Stephen Poloz approaches his position as governor of the Bank of Canada slightly differently. He thinks it is equally important to puzzle over how what could go right.

This doesn’t mean Poloz ignores the bad stuff. He assured an audience of international bankers in Lima Saturday that he is watching “closely” the heavier and heavier debt loads Canada’s households seem determined to carry. That burden, combined with soaring house prices in Toronto and Vancouver, has prompted some foreign investors to turn negative on Canada. Some of those people likely were in Poloz’s public at the annual meeting of the Institute of International Finance, a sprawling association of the world’s biggest banks.
Yet Canada’s central bank governor makes a point of resisting the human impulse to obsess over the worst-case scenario. “Uncertainty is two-sided,” Poloz told a few reporters after his speech; reporters, it should be noted, who had spent the previous several days listening to smart people obsess over worst-case scenarios related to the global economy…

While banks and many city services and stores will be closed in Ottawa on Thanksgiving Monday, some retailers and museums will remain open. Here is a list of stores and services that are open: Shopping: Most ByWard market vendors and stores, and other high tourist areas will have some stores open. The Rideau Centre will […]