Tools like the ones used in the Bear Stearns transaction, which – with no precedents – extended the Fed’s “umbrella” to investment brokerage houses. After this, it would be hard to avoid further direct assistance to help struggling homeowners to avoid the housing crisis, where the recession is spreading from residential to non-residential.
Until last year, the Bank of Canada used as its core measure of inflation the CPI excluding food, energy, and the effect of changes in indirect taxes. Volatile food and energy prices tend to reverse themselves fairly quickly.