Oh No, Canada! Are We Watching Another North American Financial Crisis Unfold?

For some time during and after the financial crisis, it was fashionable to point to Canada as a paragon of fiscal and regulatory prudence. In the years leading up to the crisis, the Canadian government ran budget surpluses, which enabled it to stimulate the economy without creating huge debt loads we now see in Greece and Spain. In addition, the Canadian banking system faced stricter capital requirements and were more risk-averse than their American and European counterparts. Perhaps most important, Canada avoided the sort of real estate bubbles seen in the U.S. and Great Britain due to tighter lending standards and the absence of mortgage interest deductibility — at least until recently. For the past year or more, Canadian officials have nervously watched as household debt levels has risen to worrying heights, fueled by increased mortgage borrowing. As The Wall Street Journal reported this week: “Borrowing to buy property has helped make Canadians some of the most leveraged consumers in the world, at a time when their counterparts in other heavily indebted countries—such as the U.S.—are digging out. Household debt is now 163.4% of disposable income in Canada, close to the U.S. level at the height of the subprime crisis.” (MORE: Canada’s Penny Is No More – Is the U.S. Penny Next?) Just like in the U.S., housing prices in Canada steadily rose in the decade immediately preceding the financial crisis, soaring 198% over ten years. They dipped slightly during the global recession, but bounced back quickly between 2009 and the beginning of this year, fueled in part by a low interest rate policy the Bank of Canada put in place to nurse the Canadian economy through the global economic slowdown. Real estate prices have risen so high, in fact, that many housing analysts believe the bubble is about to burst. Housing economist Robert Schiller told CBC news in September, “I worry that what is happening in Canada is kind of a slow-motion version of what happened in the U.S.” Indeed there are signs that the party is already over. Due in part to efforts

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