As a kid, I was sometimes bitter that I wasn’t living through an exciting time. There was no moon landing, or glorious combat like in WW2. Instead I got the collapse of communism – a good development, but not particularly exciting for me as a child – and talk from my parents about how the challenges of my generation would be more along the lines of curing AIDS. Boy has that changed!
Last year about this time people were talking about global financial trouble. Bear Sterns collapsed, but we seemed to stagger on regardless. Fannie and Freddy we tough, but nothing overly unexpected there…just a massive amount of debt taken on by the Treasury. This week we had Lehman go under and Merill as well as AIG in essence bailed out or nationalized. I may not get the moon landing, but it looks like I’m getting a replay of the 1930s!
It’s times like these that I’m happy that I live below the poverty line. Even if things get bad, they can’t get that much worse for me. My parents might not be able to retire, but that’s not really my concern. Last September a prof of mine predicted (somewhat tongue in cheek) that the US might be the next country in need of help from the IMF. Wouldn’t that be shocking? Still, they are piling up massive amounts of new debts, incurring a massive current account deficit and experiencing an economic slowdown…I don’t want to put the incredible weight of my predictive power behind this possibility, but remember, you heard it here first.
Anyway, sell your stocks, buy canned food. At least oil is cheap again!
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No outrage over Yankee-corporatism/socialism? To see private profit and public risk on such a massive scale in the country that thought the Laffer curve was a great tool for concocting policy blows me away.
Anyways, we've got our own contradictions here...Mr. Harper, er, harping on about how Canada has become more conservative over the last 20 years and the need for prudent policy in a time of economic uncertainty is proposing cutting carbon by setting arbitrary emission standards on an industry-by-industry basis, monitoring that output, fining those that exceed their Ottawa-mandated quotas, and then putting that cash in "technology fund." Not to be partisan, but Dion's plan is the interventionist, big bureaucracy one?
Gimme a break.
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