Last week, the C. D. Howe Institute was out with an op-ed contending that Canadian household debt is not worth worrying too much about: “There does not seem to be a strong case for restrictive regulation of consumer credit products, such as tight caps on interest rates.”
The C. D. Howe Institute arguing for looser financial regulation is nothing new. On the eve of the global financial crisis, it released a paper presenting more securitization as the antidote to financial risk.
But Andrew Hepburn draws my attention to the byline under last week’s op-ed: “Jim MacGee is a Bank of Montreal Professor and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Western Ontario.”
So, the Bank of Montreal Professor does not want stronger consumer-credit regulations applied to banks. What’s next? The Enbridge Professor endorsing the Northern Gateway pipeline?
Erin Weir is an economist with the United Steelworkers union and a CCPA research associate.
