Stateline World Trade Association

SLWTA presents the following without comment for consideration as it applies to international trade.

Since becoming Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets in 1992, Jeff Rubin has been Canada's most followed economist. He wrote a widely followed national column in The Globe and Mail called "Ahead of the Curve" for over four years, and he has been a fixture on network coverage on the federal budget and other key economic events for almost two decades.

Rubin first caught the attention of financial markets in 1989 with his now-famous call for a 25 per cent decline in Toronto real estate prices. Since then Rubin's work has often been the subject of national headlines and has been instrumental in raising key issues to the national spotlight. His call for the federal government to set the rate on the Goods and Services Tax at 7 per cent instead of the originally targeted 10 per cent was, in the end, accepted by the federal government even though the suggestion was not warmly received by the Finance Minister of the day.

His many calls on the economy and financial markets, particularly with regard to interest rates and the Canadian dollar, earned him no less than 10 number one rankings in either the Brendan Woods annual survey of institutional equity or fixed income investors. More recently Jeff Rubin has been an outspoken advocate of putting a price on carbon emissions in our economy.

Abroad, Rubin is best known for his work on global energy markets and has become internationally recognized for his prescient calls on oil prices and their economic impacts. He was one of the first economists to recognize the full implications of depletion for future oil supply growth. In 2000, Rubin predicted that oil prices would average $50 per barrel by the middle of the decade. And in 2005 he predicted that we would see $100 per barrel oil prices within two years. He is now predicting even higher oil prices in the future, including the advent of $26 per litre in North America.

Not only does Rubin hold an impressive track record at predicting oil prices, but his research on emerging trends in energy markets and their impact on the global economy has been noted around the world. His analysis of how OPEC oil subsidies have triggered explosive growth in oil consumption among major oil producing economies has appeared on the front page of The New York Times. Similarly, his research on how soaring transport costs will soon reverse the mass exodus of North American manufacturing jobs to cheap but distant labour markets in Asia made world headlines including one in the Wall Street Journal and appeared in Business Week, Newsweek and the Economist.

In April 2008 Jeff Rubin resigned from his two decade career on Bay Street to pursue the publication of his path-breaking book on how oil prices will reverse globalization entitled WHY YOUR WORLD IS ABOUT TO GET A WHOLE LOT SMALLER. In the new world of triple digit oil prices around the corner, distance will cost money and Rubin predicts a marked shift in economic geography that will see the re-emergence of long lost local economies. His book is now a Number 1 national bestseller.

Jeff Rubin holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto, where he graduated with distinction, and a graduate degree in economics from McGill University. He lives in Toronto with his wife and children.