Canadians Have Overtaken Americans in Wealth

From the USNews.com

For the first time in recent history, the average Canadian is richer than the average American, according to a report cited in Toronto's Globe and Mail.

And not just by a little. Currently, the average Canadian household is more than $40,000 richer than the average American household. The net worth of the average Canadian household in 2011 was $363,202, compared to around $320,000 for Americans.

If you're thinking the Canadian advantage must be due to exchange rates, think again. The Canadian dollar has actually caught up to the U.S. dollar in recent years.

"These are not 60-cent dollars, but Canadian dollars more or less at par with the U.S. greenback," Globe and Mail's Michael Adams writes.

To add insult to injury, not only are Canadians comparatively better-off than Americans, they're also more likely to be employed. The unemployment rate is 7.2 percent—and dropping—in Canada, while the U.S. is stuck with a stubbornly high rate of 8.2 percent.

Besides a strengthening currency and a better labor market, experts credit the particularly savage fallout from the financial crisis on the U.S. economy and housing market, which torpedoed home values and gutted household wealth. According to the report, real estate held by Canadians is worth more than $140,000 more on average and they have almost four times as much equity in their real estate investments.

In contrast to most of mainstream reporting, Canada’s strong currency has been imputed as manifestation of a relatively “superior” performing economy than the US.

Of course commodity exports have been partly responsible for the this but has barely been an indication of the resource course: the Dutch Disease.

Canada’s strength, according to the report, has been founded on two aspects: one relatively “better” labor market, and two, America’s boom bust cycles which has “torpedoed home values and gutted household wealth”.

While there are many other factors to consider for comparison, I would focus on three;

One, Canadian banks has outperformed the US. Like in the great depression, the US financial crisis of 2008 barely dinted on Canada’s banking system.

Two, Canada tops the US in Economic Freedom…

Canada ranks 6th in the Heritage Foundation’s world’s country ranking of economic freedom index compared to the US…

The economic freedom in the US has been in a steady descent.

Finally, Canada’s government has been relatively fiscal prudent than her neighbor.

As Cato’s Chris Edwards writes

The spending reforms of the 1990s allowed the Canadian federal government to balance its budget every year between 1998 and 2008. The government's debt plunged from 68 percent of GDP in 1995 to just 34 percent today. In the United States federal debt held by the public fell during the 1990s, reaching a low of 33 percent of GDP in 2001, but debt has soared since then to reach more than 70 percent today.

Bottom line: Economic freedom and fiscal prudence are once again depicted as key to economic prosperity.

Canada’s Housing Bubble

Central bank policies have been serially blowing bubbles everywhere.

From the Bloomberg’s chart of the day,

Canada may be on the cusp of a “severe” housing correction as real estate investment surges above a tipping point relative to economic output, according to George Athanassakos, professor of finance at the Richard Ivey School of Business.

The CHART OF THE DAY shows Canada’s housing investment as a percentage of gross domestic product, and the declines in inflation-adjusted house prices that follow when this ratio tops 7 percent.

“Eventually, everything boils down to demand and supply,” Athanassakos said in a telephone interview from Western University in London, Ontario. “Whenever this ratio goes over 7 percent, it signifies overinvestment in housing and two or three years later, we have a severe correction.”

Canada’s housing market is booming as historically-low interest rates fuel purchases, driving uphome prices and adding to record household debt. Canada’s ratio of housing investment to GDP has averaged 5.8 percent over the last 50 years and is currently at about 7 percent, based on Statistics Canada figures as of the third quarter of 2011, Athanassakos said. Housing investment includes spending on new homes, renovations and real estate transaction fees.

More from the Economist,

Speculators are pouring into the property markets in Toronto and Vancouver. “We have foreign investors who are purchasing two, three, four, five properties,” says Michael Thompson, who heads Toronto’s economic-development committee. Last month a modest Toronto home put on the market for C$380,000 ($381,500) sold for C$570,000, following a bidding war among 31 prospective buyers. According to Demographia, a consultancy, Vancouver’s ratio of home prices to incomes is the highest in the English-speaking world.

Bankers are becoming alarmed. Mark Carney, the governor of the central bank, has been warning for years that Canadians are consuming beyond their means. The bosses of banks with big mortgage businesses, including CIBC, Royal Bank of Canada and the Bank of Montreal, have all said the housing market is at or near its peak. Canada’s ratio of household debt to disposable income has risen by 40% in the past decade, recently surpassing America’s (see chart). And its ratio of house prices to income is now 30% above its historical average—less than, say, Ireland’s excesses (which reached 70%), but high enough to expect a drop. A recent report from Bank of America said Canada was “showing many of the signs of a classic bubble”.

Like China, Canada’s central bank is in a crossroad; tighten monetary environment which translates to a bust (recession/crisis), or attempt to fine tune the boom bust cycle which only delays the day of reckoning but aggravates the situation.

I am reminded by the admonitions of the preeminent Professor Murray N. Rothbard,

Like the repeated doping of a horse, the boom is kept on its way and ahead of its inevitable comeuppance, by repeated doses of the stimulant of bank credit. It is only when bank credit expansion must finally stop, either because the banks are getting into a shaky condition or because the public begins to balk at the continuing inflation, that retribution finally catches up with the boom. As soon as credit expansion stops, then the piper must be paid, and the inevitable readjustments liquidate the unsound over-investments of the boom, with the reassertion of a greater proportionate emphasis on consumers' goods production.

Central banks are caught in a bind, regulations have been failing to stop boom bust cycles, which they deny have been a product of their constant manipulation of interest rates.

8 Reasons Why Canadian Banks Have Been Crisis Resilient

Professor Mark Perry enumerates 8 reasons why Canadian banks has proven to be repeatedly resilient during crisis times and has outperformed its US contemporaries.


The scoreboard:

Number of bank failures during the 1930s: United States: 9,000, Canada: 0

Number of Bank Failures during S&L crisis (1980s-90s) United States: Almost 3,000, Canada: 2

Number of Bank Failures during the Great Recession (2007-2010) United States: 196, Canada: 0

Delinquency Rate for Home Mortgages in December 2009 United States: 9.47%, Canada: 0.45%

The 8 Reasons:

1. Full Recourse Mortgages in Canada.
2. Shorter-Term Fixed Rates in Canada
3. Mortgage Insurance Is More Common in Canada than in the United States.
4. No Tax Deductibility of Mortgage Interest in Canada.
5. Higher Prepayment Penalties in Canada.
6. Public Policy Differences for Low-Income Housing.
7. Differences in Canada’s Bank Concentration and Greater Diversification.
8. A Few Other Differences that Contribute to Bank Safety in Canada.

Bottom Line: Taken together, the features and regulations of banks in Canada outlined above create a healthy and sound “pro-lender” environment absent of political motivations for outcomes like greater homeownership, compared to the often politically motivated “pro-borrower” and “pro-homeowner” policies of the United States. While Canada’s banking system has promoted responsible borrowing and prudent lending and underwriting practices with little politically motivated interference, the U.S. banking system seems to have encouraged excessive lending to risky borrowers because of the political obsession with homeownership.(emphasis added)

Read the rest here

Canada's Banks Outperform

Interesting observation from Bloomberg's Chart of the Day.

This from Bloomberg, (bold highlights mine) ``The CHART OF THE DAY shows bank stocks in Canada’s Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index have recouped almost all of their losses since Aug. 8, 2007, the day before credit markets began seizing up. The nine stocks in the bank index trade at 91 percent of their level on that day, rebounding from a six-year low on Feb. 23. That compares with 53 percent for the MSCI World Bank Index and 35 percent for the S&P 500 Banks Index.

``“It’s easier to be comfortable in the banking sector in Canada, because while they all have different strategies, they are all relatively conservative,” said Todd Johnson, who helps manage C$125 million ($115 million) at BCV Asset Management in Winnipeg.

``Canada has the soundest banking system of the 133 countries surveyed in the Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum, which runs the Davos meetings of world leaders. The U.S. ranks 108th. No Canadian bank has failed since the early 1990s, and none of Canada’s 21 domestic banks has asked for a government bailout.

``Royal Bank of Canada, the country’s largest lender, surpassed its August 2007 stock price on Aug. 27, and last week reached the highest price since July 2007. National Bank of Canada, the nation’s sixth-biggest bank, only needs to rise 1.3 percent to reach its Aug. 8, 2007, level. National Bank has surged 88 percent in 2009, the most among lenders in the S&P/TSX and S&P 500."

Aside from liquidity issues, sound banking have been rewarded by the market.