It seems the economic press is a jumble these days. Day-to-day the general consensus on what is going on with markets is up and down, which, I suppose follows the general consensus seen in actual market performance, when it’s up, it’s up a few hundred points across the board, when it’s down, it’s down a few hundred points across the board. Fluctuation of such drastic amounts have become the norm.

Today, we see the Quebec, Canada-based Caisse de Dépôt being placed under negative creditwatch by Standard and Poor’s, after a year of negative twenty-five per cent return — ridiculously large, but less than the 35-40 per cent loss the index itself would have returned. With the S&P500 closing at a 12-year low, today, as stocks in Citibank fall lower and lower as investors check in their fears that a nationalization will result in their shares losing even more value, the company itself closed at a 20 year low of $1.50 per share. And Wal-Mart made a press release announcing plans to open a large set of new Canadian retail outlets, while killing off all its Canadian Sam’s Club warehouses — one company, which actually made a gain in 2008 of nearly 15 per cent on it’s trading value.

The slightly slower Canadian television media has spent the week discussing the Canadian banking industry, particularly the “huge success” the industry itself saw in this quarter’s results as they all report income collapses and stability numbers such as bank capital and less-risky assets which are much more favorable than “analysts” expected. A factor which nothing more than supports the general consensus that Canada may have one of the strongest banks in the world at this point — clearly, a reassuring factor for Canadian investors.

And finally, outside of market and economic news, Fatah and Hamas spoke of “peace” in between the Palestinian Authorities… an area that has been ravaged by war and violence for decades, not only between the Israelis and Palestinians but between the Palestinians themselves. While Kit, the author of the piece, mentioned the general emotion seen internationally at this point of “Obama changing the world.” I doubt anyone truly believes that this is the end of Palestinian conflict — not even the end of partisanship in the region, or the so-aptly named “Conflict of Brothers.” It certainly would be refreshing to see a push in the direction of peace so that any important internalized conflict between Palestinians themselves were to come to an end: but even so, perhaps it would just redirect further attention to Israel-Palestinian conflict.

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