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March 2011 Prairie Economic Fundamentals

Ally

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News articles for March 2011.
 

Ally

Research Assistant
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Joined
Mar 24, 2009
Messages
16,743
North America's newest real estate renaissance




Six years ago, my wife and I took a car ride through the center of Saskatchewan, Canada, spending a few days in the capital city of Regina and the small, isolated town of Moose Jaw. We preferred Moose Jaw.




At least Moose Jaw had some quirky things going for it, such as an underground town trail. Regina seemed beat-up and despondent. I guess I arrived two years too early, because around 2007 the province of Saskatchewan caught economic fire, uplifting its two biggest cities: Saskatoon and Regina.




When the U.S. and Eastern Canada began slipping into recession and residential real estate values collapsed like deflated balloons, home prices skyrocketed in Saskatoon and Regina and investors partied like it was 1999 in a Miami Beach condo. They are still partying today, but more moderately.







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Ally

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Natural gas the next 'green hope'




My March 7 column pointing out how much sense it makes, from a supply security and ethical superiority standpoint, for the United States to import oil from Canada`s oil sands rather than from unstable Middle Eastern and tyrant-led North African countries, drew this reader response: `Canada should be encouraging both countries to detox and pursue the very energy alternatives casually dismissed by Morgan.`




So what are those `casually dismissed` alternatives? Remember hydrogen? It has been more than a decade since the prospect of autos powered by hydrogen fuel cells sent shares of Ballard Power to stratospheric levels, only to collapse when the great `hydrogen highway` turned out to be the road to nowhere. Basic laws of physics were lost amid the hype. First, there`s no way of storing hydrogen at ambient temperatures, so if your car sits for a few hours, the hydrogen seeps away. Second, there are no natural hydrogen resources. It must be manufactured from a fossil-fuel based petrochemical process or through a costly electricity-intensive electrolysis process.




The next `green hope` to replace oil was biofuels, ethanol blended with gasoline, and vegetable oil blended with diesel (biodiesel). But even initially enthusiastic environmental groups have realized the folly of trying to farm our way off oil.



Read the full article here.

 
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