Alex Carrick’s Blog

There are quite a number of reasons it might be “neat” to be the Governor of the Bank of Canada.

Here, arranged in no particular order, are the Top 10.

(1) Guv’nor just sounds so great and fits in with this nation’s British heritage.

(2) You always win at Monopoly cause you can just print yourself some more money.

(3) In your economic statements, you get to use an arcane secret language that only you and a few other wise men and women, and maybe Madonna (thanks to her Kabbalah studies), really understand.

(4) Furthermore, your best writing is between the lines. And you get to chuckle over everybody else’s efforts to try to understand what you really meant by that phrase at the end of the first paragraph or that choice of words in the middle. And why has the comma been placed there and not here?

(5) The commercial bank presidents show you their shiny new interest rates first.

(6) You get to decide if former Prime Minster (for 133 days) Kim Campbell’s picture will ever appear on Canada’s currency.

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My wife can read my mind, which makes it easier for her to steal things from me.

Okay, before I get into big trouble, “steal” is too strong a word. Borrow long-term is a better description.

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Over the weekend, I had some fun imagining how certain celebrities and politicians would seem to be ideally suited for second careers, in their golden years, as “greeters” at Wal-Mart. Try to imagine being met by these people and these words on your way into the store.

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There has been a major casualty of the digital age that you may be noticing only peripherally. Has it entered your consciousness that there are fewer punning headlines anymore?

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Faced with the rapid changes brought about by computers and the Internet, one can easily be fooled into thinking that leaps in technology are something new in the course of human events. In actual fact, there have been similar seismic shifts throughout history. These have often come in the area of military advances, to gain an advantage over an enemy.

The addition of stirrups to saddles was one such “giant step” that enabled the mounted hordes of Genghis Khan to sweep across Asia. Another well-known example was the use of longbows by the British against the French at the battles of Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt in the mid-1300s.

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Looking for a “big gulp” experience? Fill up your gas guzzler. With gasoline at $1.20 per litre in Canada, it can bring a lump to your throat and tears to your eyes.

Yesterday, the Bank of Canada concluded that the Canadian economy is facing a difficult time over the next two years. In an ongoing effort to provide stimulus, the key overnight rate is being dropped by 50 basis points (100 basis points = 1.00%), with the expectation that other interest rates will follow.

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There is bathroom humour and then there is “in the bathroom” humour, which may be a form of advertising.

I have been accused, on occasion, of using bathroom humour in my speeches and written material. This mystified me until I realized that there had been a misunderstanding.

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It has often been said there are two driving seasons in Canada, winter and construction. We are currently in the transition period from the former to the latter.

My wife and I were talking about this the other day as we made our way to the cottage on Georgian Bay for the first time in the new year. To take our minds off the driving conditions, we started batting around potential names for driving schools that might prepare the next generation for the road hazards ahead.

Here are the Top 10 names we came up with. Feel free to add your own.

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There is a new fact of life that we have to deal with in the U.S. and Canada. That new reality is high world commodity prices. These are having a tremendous impact on costs and pricing, resource investment and currency values.

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In Jeopardy game-show fashion, the recent woes of Eliot Spitzer give rise to the following answer, “Only one, the Governor of New York.” But what are the six questions?

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