Fiscal Study

The European Central Bank's resolve to fight inflation may diminish following the U.S. Federal Reserve's emergency interest-rate reduction, The Bloomberg reports:

Investors increased bets on the ECB's first cut since 2003 after the Fed lowered its rate by three-quarters of a percentage point to 3.5 percent. European policy makers may now even consider a half-point reduction to spur confidence, said the Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc's Jacques Cailloux.

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Posted by fiscalstudy at 2:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The federal finance department is ratcheting down its working assumption about Canada's growth prospects for this year, CBC News reports:

Ottawa is now expecting real GDP growth of two per cent to 2.2 per cent, finance department staffers told reporters Thursday. The previous estimate — from the Oct. 30 economic statement — called for 2008 growth of 2.4 per cent.

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Posted by fiscalstudy at 1:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It looks like Congress will give the president an energy bill this Christmas after all. But it's not the gift many lawmakers would have chosen, The Forbes reports:

The Senate, by a vote of 86-8, passed an energy bill that will raise fuel-economy standards by 40% and dramatically boost production of ethanol and other biofuels. But it is merely a shadow of the bill Democrats wanted just last week, which would have required utilities to get 15% of their electricity from renewable power. They also had proposed a nearly $22 billion tax package that would have allowed Congress to extend existing production and investment incentives for wind and solar power, raising money from Big Oil to help offset the spending.

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Posted by fiscalstudy at 1:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)