The Bank of Canada cut its overnight lending rate by half a percentage point to 0.5 per cent (the lowest ever), prompting most big banks to quickly match it by dropping their prime rates to 2.5 per cent.

So there’s a silver lining in all the economic carnage – at least my business line of credit is increasingly cheap to carry.

“The collapse of the market for U.S. subprime loans more than a year ago sparked a global financial crisis that is now shrinking the economies of the world’s richest countries.”

Translation as I understand it: a lot of supposedly smart people made surprisingly reckless decisions for short term profit and now we are all paying for it.

“Once the global financial system stabilizes and global growth recovers, the underlying strength of the Canadian economy and financial sector should ensure a more rapid recovery in Canada than in most other industrialized nations,” the Bank of Canada said.

Hope it’s true.

For Those Who Think Young

The article in todays New York Times Business section reminds me of recent coverage of Gwenyth Paltrow’s GOOP newsletter – mean spirited and indicative of our continuing cultural ambivalence about successful, attractive, high profile women.

I personally think the article says a lot more about it’s author, Laura Holson, than she probably realizes.

Why is it surprising that a successful, wealthy, high profile tech executive is somewhat self-involved?  I’m pretty sure the last time I read a profile of Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison, it didn’t have the same scathing, personally critical tone.  Ms. Holson, do you never employ subjectivity in your job?  Do you not utilize self promotion to further your career?

I checked out your bio on the New York Times web site – no self promotion there at all:

“Laura M. Holson is an award-winning reporter who currently writes about communications, media and the mobile lifestyle from New York. She joined the Times in 1998, first chronicling the mergers and acquisition boom and then, in 2000, moving to Los Angeles to write about Hollywood, Michael Eisner and The Walt Disney Co. and the major movie studios. Before that she was a writer with Smart Money magazine and, in the 1980s, worked at an investment bank where she earned her stockbroker’s license and helped manage client accounts.”

An undercurrent of jealousy or lack of abundance type thinking runs through these kinds of profiles.  The same thing can be said about recent commentary of Ms. Paltrow’s  new venture, chronicled (coincidentally?) in last Sunday’s New York Times.

It saddens me that the worst enemy of womens’ ascent to the higher ranks of business or popular culture often appears to be other women.  I’m not saying that we need to be holding hands, skipping through the fields together, but maybe we could think about why we so often feel the need to tear each other down.