UPDATE-1: Bank of Canada's new strategy? "honesty", apparently

Haha, oh boy. You can not make this stuff up folks. You cannot!

In a speech in Montreal, he said the central bank was more worried about downside risks to inflation than upside ones since inflation is well below a 2 percent target, but he stopped short of hinting at any easing.

Asked at a news conference afterwards whether it was accurate that the bank was getting ready to cut, he said: "We don't know. We've expressed our neutrality on that question, which is to say that we're even-handed on the two sides of it at this stage, given what we know today."

He said the bank's move in October and again this month to stop referring to future rate hikes, following 18 months of more hawkish language, was a shift to honesty rather than dovishness.

"All we're really doing is being honest that at this stage we think that interest rates will stay where they are for quite some time, so issuing a warning they're almost ready to go up is not the right timing for this," he said.

"Of course, we believe it will happen as the story unfolds but the destination seems far enough away that we can address that as we get closer," he said.

A shift to honesty, which I can only imagine must be from.. dishonesty, then? Hmm.

Canada’s housing market most overvalued in the world, Deutsche Bank says
According to the IMF, Canada has the most overvalued housing market in the world
Canadian housing 21% overvalued, ratings agency says

And oh yea, there's "low inflation" (we've gone over that before) and somehow housing prices just keep inching up, and up and up. But our officials insist there's no bubble. It's a concern, sure, but certainly not a concern that would warrant, oh I don't know, raising interest rates? Or is it because we can't, Bank of Canada? Is it because we're competing with the FED and American cash injections? Is our dollar really lower, or is this just a speculative taper caper high? You see it's tough to know, isn't it?

Rigged markets certainly don't make that any easier.

The system is rigged

Then the most shocking of all, a key international interest rate used to set trillions of dollars of prices, is being manipulated. LIBOR, the London Interbank Offered Rate, is like the foundation of a house that holds billions of people. If that foundation is askew — as we now know it was — what does that say about huge parts of the markets and those prices we thought were based on real information? A mirage.

For this business journalist, the shock of that was intense. There will always be fraudsters — smooth-talking snake oil pitchmen — and regulators are on the lookout for them. But the evidence is mounting that whenever it is possible to fix a price for personal gain, someone is doing it.

That’s not just a disappointment; it undermines the entire system. Tiny price distortions get magnified across the global economy. We all pay, even if we don’t really know it. Most important, if market participants — from a sophisticated bond trader trying to price a bond based off a benchmark rate, to your grandmother putting her life savings into a stock — don’t believe in its fundamental soundness, don’t believe that prices are as fair as prices can be, the entire thing falls apart.

Are we done playing this stupid game yet? Or are we just going to pretend that somehow Canada exists in a special void of economic wonder where "prudent fiscal leadership" saved the day? The U.S. saved the day, and they're still saving the day today at a cost to the American people of $85/billion per month. We're still on extreme emergency life support folks and it isn't going to last forever!

Update-1

O-M-G! folks, you can not make this shit up! Last line:

The central bank chief has previous stressed he is focused on inflation and that the value of the Canadian dollar is determined by markets.

The "markets", not the easing. Riiiiight. I guess honesty isn't so forthcoming after all.

This part, then, is even funnier:

Poloz told Reuters in December the recent Canadian dollar weakening may have been partly caused by sentiment about the U.S. Federal Reserve's plans to taper its latest round of bond-buying. But added he did not want to extrapolate where the currency was headed.

It's the markets! it's the FED! says the recently "honest" Bank of Canada. Good times.

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Richard Fantin is a self-taught software developer who has mostly throughout his career focused on financial applications and high frequency trading. He currently works for CenturyLink

Nazayh Zanidean is a Project Coordinator for a mid-sized construction contractor in Calgary, Alberta. He enjoys writing as a hobby on topics that include foreign policy, international human rights, security and systemic media bias.