Five things we learned from RBC economist Eric Lascelles

rob magazine

The Royal Bank of Canada’s head office in Toronto’s Financial District.

If you look at the prices of precious metals and cryptocurrency recently, and the huge annual deficit figures coming out of Ottawa and Washington, you might think North America is headed for hyperinflation. But central banks are cutting interest rates to combat economic weakness. What’s an investor to do? We asked Lascelles, chief economist at RBC Global Asset Management.

1. Lascelles knows it’s now kind of a cliché: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” Pick a theme: speculation in railway stocks in the 19th century, tariffs imposed in the 1930s, massive government debt after the Second World War, 1970s stagflation, the 1990s tech bubble and more. “You can draw parallels on individual th