In this interview with BNN, Ed Devlin discussed the Canadian government’s new budget and whether it addresses the needs of the economy.
Ed Devlin began by stating that the budget was highly political, and targeted specific demographic groups such as millennials who were entering the housing market. He also believes that the governments approach to the housing market will not affect the main hot zones of Toronto and Vancouver, and that he was not particularly concerned about the effects. When asked if investors in fixed income assets should be concerned about risk, he responded that Pimco had correctly discounted the effect of previous interest rate hikes and had expected the recent decline in long term rates.
Finally, Ed stated that despite the global economic slowdown, the idea that Canada needed fiscal policy is “debateable”. In his view the government can either redistribute wealth or grow the overall amount of wealth. According to him, recent budgets had leaned towards redistribution rather than growth, and that growth is important to fund the government programs being implemented.