There was never enough ice in North Vancouver to satisfy a young would-be hockey star. Given the mild climate, and very expensive registration fees, my primary outlet was road hockey, and I had a great deal of company there. We had neighborhood teams who challenged other neighborhood teams and even developed an elaborate league and playoff system.
We generally played with a tennis ball, which made us feel like bigger boys because the ball was easy to send great distances and lift off the ground with our skinny little arms.
Everything changed one Christmas when my father gave me a bucket full of hockey pucks, promotional items from his workplace. There must have been 50 of them. At first I used them as dominoes and didn't want to get them dirty. Pucks don't do well on pavement, and I was certainly not allowed to shoot them around the basement, so what else could I do?
As a nine year-old I lacked three assets which would have made the pucks a more suitable gift: ice, a puck-heavy hockey net, and muscles.
Hour-after-hour I practiced in the backyard on a sheet of plywood. At first I couldn't consistently lift the puck off the ground as I shot it against the neighbour's fence.
Eventually it dawned on me that I could prop the plywood up with some boards under one end and thus get some lift on the puck.
It worked beautifully, as if the pucks were being ejected from Evil Knievel's own launch pad. It worked even better after propping the board up still higher. With it lifted more than 18 inches I was not only hitting the fence at crossbar height, but periodically clearing it altogether, much to my delight.
Soon I was exceeding the fence-top consistently. The unfortunate next-door neighbour was unimpressed, and I had to pick my spots in retrieving the pucks while he was not around to harass me or confiscate them.
The following year my ability and strength increased to the point that with great effort, and a bit of skill, I could clear the cranky neighbour's entire yard. The people in the second house over were a much kinder bunch, who sported an in-ground swimming pool which became the active target of my puck launches. Looking back, it amazes me how kind they were to us. Their kindness didn't even fade when my sister was swimming in the pool with friends, and I skipped the puck in to the pool near-missing one of them.
But my shot was far from perfect. The extra oomph required to clear the entire yard meant that the errant shots which did not clear the first fence were sent at maximum velocity, sometimes knocking out a plank.
To me this was the cost of doing business. To the neighbour it was an unpardonable sin, to be fiercely reported to my mother resulting in the temporary seizure of stick and pucks. I replaced the dislodged fence boards myself, and took my game back to the street, forever pining for my first opportunity on real ice... but that's another story.
Some may have been wondering why in the face of excessive household and government debt, policymakers have been holding interest rates so low for the past number of years. Low interest rates make it easier to borrow and more likely for the debt problem to be exacerbated. So why make it so easy on borrowers?
The low interest rates do more than encourage borrowing. They also make the safest of investments so unattractive as to encourage investors to take more risk. For example, when looking at a five-year GIC of 2.4 per cent, many are forced to consider what else is out there.
The sorts of risks that might reward investors with higher returns tend to be the same things which increase employment and generate spin-off economic activity. Investing in plant and equipment, expanding the workforce, launching new product lines, investing in dividend-paying equities might be suitable for those with the appropriate risk tolerance and investment horizon.
It is no secret that this policy is an attempt at a launch pad. The hope is to eventually lift consumer confidence into a self-perpetuating recovery. In fact, the mere signaling of this policy has help with market confidence. The clear goal is to help people to feel more wealthy and thus more likely to spend - in other words, to increase consumer confidence.
Like the boards on the end of my plywood, the intended effect is to launch the target further and higher. Once the economy has sufficient strength to carry on without assistance, the stimulus can and should be pulled back.
"Like a ramp, low interest rates are designed to lift the economy. The trick is getting them back to normal before they cause more harm than good."
Mark Ryan is an advisor in Prince George with RBC wealth management, Dominion securities (member CIPF) and can be reached at [email protected].
