The 2008 election was an interesting time for me. I was now officially laid off from Nortel, and was in search of a job. Jack Layton’s power broker status gave us hope, but that was short lived. I was dealing with severance funds and planning what to do next.
Strong Minority?
My prognosticative skills are about as good as my stock picking skills, my Liberal minority turned into a “Strong” Tory Minority, but we are back where we started. The Tories still cannot run the country without the help of 12 close friends of some kind (i.e. they are short of a majority by about that many seats), so where does that lead us? Back where we started and a question about whether this government will last as long as the last one did, that remains to be seen.
The Liberals will now “eat their young” and go looking for a new leader, Jack Layton is kind of a power broker so his job is relatively safe, and the Greens did better, but their leader really needs to get into Parliament as the next big step. The Bloc, I still have no idea what their goals are now, since they didn’t mention sovereignty much over the campaign.
Plus ça change, plus ils restent les mêmes.
Economic Recovery?
Not really, not yet. The Markets in Canada recovered somewhat but most stocks are still well down and don’t show signs of a huge recovery just yet. Canadian banks showed a strong recovery but other stocks were mostly mirrors of what happened in the U.S. on Monday. The TSX showed a record upswing, but it was mostly historical price fixes from the Monday boom on the U.S. markets, it will be interesting to see today whether this “rally” will keep going.
Plan Started
As of yesterday some of my severance package was in place, so my wife and I started our plan to stay afloat as long as possible, given the “sketchy” job market currently.
- All short term debt has been eliminated, the only debt I now carry is my mortgage
- A large part of money has been put in short term investments
- A smaller amount will be more liquid
- All bills have been paid
It was quite odd seeing in Quicken that I had no short term debt any more, except my mortgage. This is the first time I have been in this state for many years, and I like it, but now I must find a new job quickly to make sure this state of affairs continues.
