Put them together and what have you got?

Another month, another decline in Canadian GDP -- that's five in a row. It looks very much as if the economists who said just this week that the economy was not in recession may have spoken too soon.

In the meantime, there are further warnings that persistently lax monetary policy is storing up problems for the housing market, especially in Toronto and Vancouver. The economists at my old shop at TD Bank are calling the market "frothy", and there are similar concerns from at least one other bank (BMo) and a major realtor.

Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz airily dismisses the rise in home prices as a "side effect" of his stimulative policy stance, so if the data continue to show the economy tanking, he's unlikely to let warnings from banks and realtors stop him from cutting rates again, As I've written before, we won't be calling them "side effects" when the housing market flames out.

And now there's about to be a further complication. The Federal election won't be held until October 19, but PM Stephen Harper can start the campaign any time he wants. For various reasons that I may well examine in a future post, it looks as though the election campaign will formally begin this weekend. Oh joy, an 11-week campaign, with half of it taking place in what's left of the summer. More importantly, that's 11 weeks in which policy makers will effectively be focused only on short-term electoral advantages, and not on the steps that need to be taken to get the economy back on track. This doesn't look good at all.