A question for Canada’s Governors…and a modest proposal
If , as we have been told, we are so supposedly independent of the U.S. economy, that “Canada is not the United States” that our banks remain in “considerably better shape than their international peers”, then why the fuck has our Canadian dollar been pounded so brutally in the past few days…by a currency that finds its home in a country suffering its worst economic crisis in 80 years, if not its entire history?
The price I now must pay for first editions in Ithaca just (okay, in the past little while) went up 20 percent…or close to it. This is serious. It’s time to do something. Problem is, nobody knows what. Time to vote for the Rhinoceros party.
Or perhaps adopt an entirely new economic system…like China’s for example. Which we may have to do anyway if the free market continues to provide the kinds of staggering rewards it has over the past several decades. China owns most of the U.S. and Canada now anyway doesn’t it? Maybe they’ll come to the rescue…if for no other reason than to ensure that we pay them all the money we owe…
And another thing. Instead of handing over $700 billion to the banks, why doesn’t the U.S. government instead give each American citizen one million dollars with which to pay off their debts, put aside for retirement, party? Seems to me the whole country would benefit way more from this, than giving the dough to the jerks who got us into the mess in the first place.
October 11th, 2008 at 9:18 AM
You know, Nigel, I have long thought there was much to Ronald Reagan’s quip that "if you laid all the economists in the world end to end – you’d never reach a conclusion." There’s also the notion that God made economists so that meteorologists would look good."
October 12th, 2008 at 9:46 PM
Actually, Frank, it was Ronald Regan who helped to get us into this mess by deregulating, well…everything. When you let the wolves watch the chicken house…. Michael – California
October 14th, 2008 at 6:00 AM
Everything in the Canadian economy rides on commodities. As they go, so goes the C$.