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That the economy was contracting six or even three months ago does not necessarily mean rates should be cut today — even assuming monetary policy had such certain and instantaneous effects as today’s neo-fine-tuners seem to believe. At that, beyond the short run the bank can really only effect changes in nominal variables — inflation, or nominal gross domestic product — not the things politicians hope it would and think it should, like unemployment or softness in particular regions or sectors.

Still, so long as the bank remains resolutely focused on keeping inflation at (or preferably under) two per cent, who am I to judge? Though the tendency of the U.S. Federal Reserve to gin up higher inflation the year after an election — in pursuit of higher output the year of — is well documented, I know of no evidence of any similar politicization of the Bank of Canada, under this or any previous governor. So there is no reason to think this rate cut has anything to do with the election.

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Not so for just about everything else coming out of Ottawa these days. Politicians are forever trying to convince the public they have magical powers over the economy — witness the commitment of every successful candidate or party to “focus” on the economy, as if just by staring at it they could make it better — and never more so than when there is an election on.

Just the whiff of a downturn, real or apprehended, past or present, has them all in a frenzy. The opposition are demanding fiscal stimulus, while the Tories claim to have already delivered it, in the form of next week’s mailout of back-dated child benefit cheques (a $3-billion “injection,” as Pierre Poilievre keeps calling it) each apparently oblivious to the fact that unless you actually alter the government’s net fiscal position — go into deficit, in other words — there isn’t any stimulus, even in Keynesian terms. Naturally, none of them admit to any such ambition.