The Economic Brief – When can we begin to expect some interest rate relief?

Avery Shenfeld: Canadians who might be getting frustrated, wondering when we were going to get some relief from the pain of high interest rates, got some very good news of late, with much lower inflation coming through in the last couple of months. And that positions the Bank of Canada to deliver, what I call, “Mick Jagger monetary policy”, reminding me of the lyric of the Rolling Stones, “You can’t always get what you want, but you get what you need.” Given that inflation is now lowered, there’s no reason for the Bank of Canada to risk an outright recession by delaying interest rate cuts for too long. And we do expect interest rate relief to begin in the middle of the year and be sufficiently aggressive to ensure that we avoid a hard landing for the economy. In the US, where the economy has been weathering the storm of high interest rates much better, giving the economy what it needs will mean that the Federal Reserve may well delay that first interest rate cut a bit longer and perhaps provide a bit less relief overall. But both economies should get “what they need”, in terms of avoiding an outright hard landing.