The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.
Australia’s central bank has cut its key interest rate again, to a record low, underscoring concern that a global commodity slump and slower growth in China will weaken its resource-based economy.
The country is trying to kickstart consumer and business spending with the cuts because the mining sector has peaked and capital spending in that industry is falling, while economic growth posted by the country’s key trading partner, China, is slowing.
That’s a cautionary tale for Canada, which has a similar resource-based economy, dependant on exports. Weaker commodity prices help to explain, for example, a near-one-third drop this year in the share price of Vancouver-based Teck Resources Ltd., which ships about 15 to 20 per cent of its coking coal output to China.
Still, there are enough differences between the two countries, economists say, to insulate Canada from the economic turbulence facing our antipodal cousin.