If you think it is bad in the US? Have a look at Canada!

[LargoWinch]

The US has Obama to "spread the wealth"... we may have 3 guys doing it!

But for now: no more government until January 2009; because the economy is doing so well of course (especially in autontario). It is also time to leave the driver's seat now that we are entering the minefield...

[LargoWinch]

Re: If you think it is bad in the US? Have a look at Canada!

Ok I will reply to my own post for the first time: see the results of our "strong" currency...

[ASH]

Re: If you think it is bad in the US? Have a look at Canada!

Ok I will reply to my own post for the first time: see the results of our "strong" currency...

Maybe the grass is always greener (on the other side of the border), but I still like the combination of lots of land/resources and few people. I think the present ructions are a special case as regards currencies, and perhaps the Canadian dollar will still look attractive when the dust settles.

[Nicolasd]

Re: If you think it is bad in the US? Have a look at Canada!

We are still in a better shape than US, a few banks reported profits this week, granted , much less than comparable quarters but still profits

All our social programs are funded

We did not entred into a massive bail out program yet , thank god , we have a reprieve from the buffons in Ottawa such that the start of spending is postponed at least until end of January

Currency will come back alive and kicking the minute we are done with EJ's disinflation

[LargoWinch]

Re: If you think it is bad in the US? Have a look at Canada!

Maybe the grass is always greener (on the other side of the border), but I still like the combination of lots of land/resources and few people. I think the present ructions are a special case as regards currencies, and perhaps the Canadian dollar will still look attractive when the dust settles.

I still prefer gold over Canadian fiat any day:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/b...0b-report.aspx

Remember; this is equal to over $300B in the US as Canada's GDP is roughly 1/10 of the US...

[LargoWinch]

Re: If you think it is bad in the US? Have a look at Canada!

Regarde mon post en haut Nicolasd; or et le brute a 100%...

[phirang]

Re: If you think it is bad in the US? Have a look at Canada!

Fret not, LargoWinch:

China is about to devalue the Yuan. You will get demand yet again for your ore and fine timber chopped down by manly men who scare the sheep.

[LargoWinch]

Re: If you think it is bad in the US? Have a look at Canada!

Fret not, LargoWinch:

China is about to devalue the Yuan. You will get demand yet again for your ore and fine timber chopped down by manly men who scare the sheep.

phirang! omg I thought you died!

glad to see you alive.

[Nicolasd]

Re: If you think it is bad in the US? Have a look at Canada!

J'ai bien vu le video.
D'accord pour or et brut
J'espere qu'ils seront tres sage avec le programme de relance en Janvier.

[LargoWinch]

Re: If you think it is bad in the US? Have a look at Canada!

J'espere qu'ils seront tres sage avec le programme de relance en Janvier.

...oui: le meme jour que les Leafs vont gagner la coupe et la Molson sera gratuite.

[Yaowarat]

Re: If you think it is bad in the US? Have a look at Canada!

Thanks for posting.
Inside the USA there is almost no coverage of this event.

The professor was a typical academic bonehead.

[Nicolasd]

Re: If you think it is bad in the US? Have a look at Canada!

Molson ? J'aurai parier sur Sleeman

[oddlots]

Re: If you think it is bad in the US? Have a look at Canada!

Beware I've got two hands...

Agree, that York U guy is obviously a waste of tenure. I remember when I was considering doing a graduate degree in Poli Sci and looked at their prospectus it literally said "York U offers a full range of Marxist scholarship." I'm not objecting to Marxists. It's the unself-aware idiocy that blew me away. I used to call it the centre for marginal studies.

Anyway I sort of liked this piece I saw at Naked Capitalism:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/...-programs.html

Economist Tom Ferguson:

"Yet what is being advocated as a Keynesian remedy is in fact the opposite of what Keynes called for in his day. Keynes' prescription then would lead to a global rebalancing, with the US depending more on internally generated demand and less on its foreign partners (who were defaulting on their government debt). But if it were successfully deployed in the US now, it wold lead to a continuation, of our excessive consumption and China's underdevelopment of its internal demand."

Martin Wolf:

"This then is the endgame for the global imbalances. On the one hand are the surplus countries. On the other are these huge fiscal deficits. So deficits aimed at sustaining demand will be piled on top of the fiscal costs of rescuing banking systems bankrupted in the rush to finance excess spending by uncreditworthy households via securitised lending against overpriced houses.

This is not a durable solution to the challenge of sustaining global demand. Sooner or later....willingness to absorb government paper and the liabilities of central banks will reach a limit. At that point crisis will come. To avoid that dire outcome the private sector of these economies must be able and willing to borrow; or the economy must be rebalanced, with stronger external balances as the counterpart of smaller domestic deficits. Given the overhang of private debt, the first outcome looks not so much unlikely as lethal. So it must be the latter.

In normal times, current account surpluses of countries that are either structurally mercantilist – that is, have a chronic excess of output over spending, like Germany and Japan – or follow mercantilist policies – that is, keep exchange rates down through huge foreign currency intervention, like China – are even useful. In a crisis of deficient demand, however, they are dangerously contractionary.

Countries with large external surpluses import demand from the rest of the world. In a deep recession, this is a “beggar-my-neighbour” policy. It makes impossible the necessary combination of global rebalancing with sustained aggregate demand. John Maynard Keynes argued just this when negotiating the post-second world war order.

In short, if the world economy is to get through this crisis in reasonable shape, creditworthy surplus countries must expand domestic demand relative to potential output. How they achieve this outcome is up to them. But only in this way can the deficit countries realistically hope to avoid spending themselves into bankruptcy."

On this logic surplus countries are the only ones in a position to employ stimulus without actually exacerbating the imbalances that created the crisis that made the stimulus necessary. I think Canada would fall into that category.

But it still disturbs me that the bawlderised version of Keynes is taken as a home-truth by everyone. Something that popular is never right.

[GRG55]

Re: If you think it is bad in the US? Have a look at Canada!

The US has Obama to "spread the wealth"... we may have 3 guys doing it!

But for now: no more government until January 2009; because the economy is doing so well of course (especially in autontario). It is also time to leave the driver's seat now that we are entering the minefield

Largo: If you didn't catch Jon Stewart's Daily Show on the tube yesterday, make sure you check out the vid on their site. It's so good it probably meets the CRTC [for those that don't know, this is Canada's Restriction To Competition tribunal] Canadian content rules...

Provinces in Peril - Indecision Oh-Eh? (04:19)

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/in...ril-indecision



[Those accessing from Canadian ISPs will probably have to go to the Comedy Network and find the first clip of the Daily Show off the menu.]

http://www.thecomedynetwork.ca/

[LargoWinch]

Re: If you think it is bad in the US? Have a look at Canada!

Largo: If you didn't catch Jon Stewart's Daily Show on the tube yesterday, make sure you check out the vid on their site. It's so good it probably meets the CRTC [for those that don't know, this is Canada's Restriction To Competition tribunal] Canadian content rules...

Provinces in Peril - Indecision Oh-Eh? (04:19)

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/in...ril-indecision



[Those accessing from Canadian ISPs will probably have to go to the Comedy Network and find the first clip of the Daily Show off the menu.]

http://www.thecomedynetwork.ca/

Long live the Queen!

We love her so much in Quebec...