Financial Update for March 24, 2009

• TSX-109.12(Reuters)
• DOW -115.65
• Dollar -.62c to 81.18USD
• Oil +$.18 to $53.98US per barrel.
• Gold -$28.70 to $923.80USD per ounce
• Canadian 5 yr bond yields +.10bps to 1.86 Four weeks ago it was at 2.02
• http://www.financialpost.com/markets/market_data/money-yields-can_us.html

The big drop we saw in the bond yields at the end of last week from 1.89 to 1.69 has been all but lost (as expected, as it was a reactionary move).


Recession hits home as more Canadians bankrupt, collecting EI benefits
Julian Beltrame, The Canadian Press OTTAWA - New figures showing a spike in personal bankruptcies and employment insurance applications show the recession is causing a lot of anguish with Canadians. And given that the two distress indicators lag what is actually occurring in the economy, analysts say the next 12 months will see many more personal and corporate bankruptcies in Canada.

"This is the real Main Street stuff," said the head of Dale Orr Economic Insight. "This is people who have been laid off, so this is a direct cause of the bad economy. This is just the beginning, it's going to be the end of 2011 before we're back in equilibrium again," Orr predicted.

The federal Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy reported Tuesday that 7,944 individuals across Canada filed for bankruptcy in January, up 21.7 per cent from a year earlier.

Over the past 12 months as a whole, about 12,000 Canadians became insolvent.
In another indicator of the recession's bite, Statistics Canada reported Tuesday that 560,400 Canadians were getting regular employment insurance benefits in January, 104,000 more or 22.8 per cent more than 11 months earlier and 23,700 more than in December.