By Angela Harmantas
New lows for the loonie, a win for Canadian internet consumers and Greece’s irrational economic woes – here are three things we’re watching today:
The Canadian dollar fell to its lowest level in over a decade on Wednesday, at one point reaching 76.70 cents against the US dollar. The value hasn’t been this bad since September 2004 when it reached 75 cents. Will we see a 75-cent loonie in the next few days? With the oil prices dipping below US$50 yesterday, and another interest rate cut possibly on the horizon, the dollar could get worse before it gets better.
Canada’s biggest telecommunications companies will now have to share their high-speed cable infrastructure with smaller competitors who want to offer broadband services, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) decided in a court ruling on Wednesday. Essentially the CRTC is hoping that the decision will allow smaller players to offer premium, higher-speed internet packages to consumers, driving down prices as competition increases. But do Bell and Rogers now have the incentive to lay more fibre optic cables and continue to build infrastructure? There’s a lot of nitty-gritty in this ruling but it looks like a win for Canadian internet users.
There may be a bailout package from the European Union on the table, but the chaos in Greece hasn’t subsided just yet. Greece’s parliament passed crucial bailout reforms demanded by the European Union early Thursday morning despite protests in Athens and fears of a revolt by MPs who spoke out against the punishing terms. As Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote in yesterday’s Globe and Mail, “It is economically irrational for Greeks to prefer continued membership in the euro zone, when they could remain in the EU with a restored national currency that they could devalue.” I highly recommend reading the article if you’re as confounded by Greece’s economic sensibility as I am.
