Banks are hunkering down. They are preparing for loans to go bad and this all sounds bad but I'm going to take another mongerism here and I'm going to go invert, always invert. You want to be a buyer of these types of assets when things look bad.

I'm Mary Long and that's Jim Gillies, a senior analyst for Motley Fool Canada.

Today we're hitting the road and putting the spotlight on Canada to get a sense of what

investment opportunities exist in America's northern neighbor.

Nick Saipel, another analyst for the Fool's Canadian service,

caught up with Jim in late November.

They discuss how to find upside in a messy housing market,

accidental tech companies, and a quality business that specializes in the absurd.

Let's set the stage.

Most of our listeners here today are going to be American listeners on Motley Fool.

Money, how do you compare and contrast the Canadian economy with the U.S. economy or

listeners are probably more familiar with?

Sure, thanks, Nick.

The real quick rule of thumb is we're generally about a tenth of your size.

Pick any metric you want, GDP, population, you know, whatever.

We're generally about one-tenth your size.

And so, you know, that, you know, we are the size population-wise

of one of your larger states.

Okay, and, you know, we are rich in landmass,

but we tend to cluster a lot.

We tend to, I believe it's about 90% of our people, myself included, live within 150 miles of the U.S. border, or 240 kilometers if you prefer. We go to McDonald's as much as you do kind of thing.

We watch the same movies, have the same pop culture, yada yada yada.

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