Bob, don't worry mate. A rain will come soon (it is Vancouver after all) and wash these streets clean.

It's called high interest rates, and it has the amazing ability to silence those people who have been annoying you at dinner parties for the last 5 years with tales of their Trumponian sized empire.

It'll be back to talking about corn and Eugene Levy in no time.

realpaul / patriotz inflation / deflation "The annual rate of increase in the Bank of Canada’s core measure, which eliminates a number of the more volatile series, both energy and non-energy, and thus better reflects the underlying trend in inflation, continues to increase close to the two per cent mid-range target." http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2009/07/17/inflatio… According to this article, you are both wrong, at least at present. Volatile sectors are excluded from the monthly calculations, which may just be the feds gaming the system or there may be a reasonable argument there. Also, it would seem that federal stimuluses have have as yet little inflationary effect. Would be interesting to hear what you guys think of these "official" inflation numbers. Personally, I think month to month this is impossible to get a handle on, so I'm interested in looking ahead for the long-term… Read more »

Bob I have lived in Vancouver and surrounding areas my whole life well up to 3 years ago. I don't remember it every being low key. I always found the peole flaky. Unless you moved here a long time ago like in the sixties I find it hard to believe it was low key when you got here.

So after waiting years for the real estate bubble to pop in Vancouver I've come to the conclusion I don't really want to be here anymore. Over the years Vancouverites seem to have taken on an arrogant self absorbed me first attitude. When I first moved here I was attracted to the fact people in Vancouver were so accepting and low key. Is it just me or did something change here? Was it those "best place on earth" licence plates that made the majority fat heads?

Ulsterman:I think that workload has been shifted to delta port and there are restrictions for batches of employees.Some might have lost many hours of work but others are gaining,Specially Those employees with permit for Delta port,Container traffic on that port was increased 95% compare to last year and it was reported in the Vancouver sun around May 2009 .

The whole system is phooked: The reduction in port traffic shows imports are almost 3 X's the exports. The imports , by and large, are basically loonie store stuff and other cheap manufactured goods. We sell them the raw materials to produce the aforementioned. The ports want to expand? Gateway? lol. No…they want to convert that prime waterfront to more condos and shift the truck traffic elsewhere. Improving Gateway any further simply worsens the imbalance…we are exportng more jobs than we are creating. Economists talk about our need to be more competitive, higher efficiencies,higher productivity blah, blah. Tell that to bankrupt auto manufacturing sector or BC's idle sawmills. There is a point that greater productivity is a race to the bottom, it leaves a lot of unemployed in their wake. When this mess started last fall I asked other posters… Read more »

me neither. too many year spent creaming high union wages. time for a rational readjustment, imho.

then again, sucks to be those in the readjustment firing line, so let's hope they adjust well to the new situation.

Dry spell on the West Coast docks http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoast… Quote: Longshore worker Ryan Groening woke up at dawn one recent rainy weekday and drove from his Port Coquitlam condo to the east Vancouver dispatch hall, hoping for work at Vancouver's port. The 40-minute trip was fruitless, as there was no work for him and dozens of other longshore workers. Groening usually worked five days a week last year, but so far this year he's been getting two to three days of work a week. "It's like going from full-time to part-time," he said. Like his father, Groening was lured to the busiest Canadian port by the variety of work and the ability to make an honest living and "raise a family on a union wage." But annual wages have plummeted for many workers and nearly disappeared for some as work has… Read more »

Maybe signs of a difficult economy or mismanagement, regardless another group of decent wage earners are out of work for now.

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/fp/Debts+for…

M-: #29 M, let me take a flyer here and let you know that I think the government is playing a game of 'backy-stabby' with the public through the media. I think the reason that the MSM isn't on the story is because when they are the government cuts off their advertising and access. It looks as if the government is being forthcoming but they play a cynical game of keeping the masses in the dark, so as not to 'create a panic, obstensively. Its the same game that they play with FOI docs. The info is available but you'll have to crawl over barbed wire to get to it. Now , you have found some info. The question is, how many people are going to go through that exercise? The fact that it isn't mainstream means that 99.9% of… Read more »