The loonie slipped to a 13-year low on Tuesday, but one Canadian economist says there is no need to hit the panic button.
The Canadian dollar briefly dropped below 70 cents Tuesday morning, as oil dipped too, below US$30 a barrel.
But Craig Alexander, vice-president of economic analysis at the C.D. Howe Institute, says despite a low dollar and plummeting oil prices, there isn’t “panic” in the marketplace.
“I lived through the financial crisis of 2008, and I can tell you, this is not 2008,” Alexander said on CTV’s Canada AM on Wednesday.
Alexander says investors are scaling back their expectations for global growth as commodity prices stay low. That’s bad news for the Canadian economy too, and raises speculation about where the Bank of Canada will take interest rates.
“What we’re not seeing is the financial distress that we saw in 2008,” Alexander said. “The global financial system isn’t seizing up.”
