PatM

Just take a look at the fact. Every "conservative" government around the western world in the last 30 years has TANKED their own economies and created MASSIVE debt. Instead of spending, they cut taxes to business and the very rich while borrowing to make up for the lost revenue - then raise taxes on the lower classes to pay back the money they borrowed to make up for the money they gave to the rich. In the 1950s, tax on business accounted for 50% of government revenue - today that is down to 9% - they've had a 41% tax cut! The wealthiest 10% account for less of government revenue now too - 20% less just in the last decade! We middle and lower income earners had to make up all that lost revenue. Just WHO is the "bankrupter"? Read "Confessions of an Economic Hit man" - though not specifically about liberal vs conservative politics, It'll show you the "conservative" mindset.

I agree that eliminating provincial deficits and paying down existing debt is very important. However, Canada is currently in very good financial shape when compared to all other G7 countries and there is no need for anyone to be alarmed. If something changes which pushes the Federal gov't back into a deficit position then we need to worry. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Spawhawk has the right of it. We aren't in a debt crisis at the moment. Continuing to pay the debt down is important. More important though, is getting the Bank of Canada to assume more of the foreign debt. We're paying 16%-22% interest on foreign debt instead of 1% to the Bank of Canada. It doesn't have the reserves to handle all our foreign debt but it can take some of the load off. The interest saved would go a long way to paying off even more debt.

A primer for those who've never really thought about it. Money is merely a method of exchange (remember this) First, what came before money? The Barter system - where people exchanged goods or services with one another to get things they couldn't produce or do for themselves. Maybe you have two extra pigs and I know how to thatch a roof - I could eat pork chops for a few months and you could have a dry night in bed. There were problems with the barter system though. Its fairly diffucult to carry a pair of pigs around while you look for a thatcher. And what if the only thatchers around had enough pigs already? If you didn't have something a thatcher wanted, you had to make due with a soggy bed. This is where money comes in handy. If a society decides that a certain, easily transportable item (that doesnt need to be fed) has value to every person, they can barter that item for whatever goods or services they want. Since everyone wants it you never have to worry about having something that nobody wants. Although the barter system is considered outdated and not part of our currency economic system, our system really is a form of barter. The best thing to use as money is something that has an intrinsic value. The item itself is worth something to everyone. It might be pretty sea-shells (wampum), gems (too rare for widespread use) or semi-rare metals (silver, gold). Precious metals were the favorite choice for money - rulers would engrave them with their images to make it look all formal and proper but, the value of that money was in the metal itself - not in its markings. Melt down the metal and cast it into a different shape - it still had its intrinsic value. There were some drawbacks though. Many rulers would undersize their coins - marking it as X value but only having Y weight. Some would be a little sneakier and add "filler" metals to make the coins heavier (thus the biting of coins to check their worth). All in all though, it was a good system. Didn't matter if a ruler was deposed and his money decreed worthless, you could melt it down and eliminate any connection to the disfavoured ruler - preserving the worth of your money. The biggest problem with precious metals is that the supply is finite. While prices may stay the same, populations keep growing. Unless you can constantly add enough metals into circulation to keep the proportion of metal per person the same, the metal starts getting scarcer. As the metal becomes scarce, people are willing to give more goods or services to get it - its worth increases but fewer people can have it. The same, but opposite, is true if too much of the metal is added into circulation. As it becomes more abundant, people are willing to give more of the metal in exchange for goods and services. One often overlooked fact about the Spanish conquest of the "New World" is that Spain (and a fair chunk of the rest of europe) went through a hefty inflationary period. So much gold and silver was entering circulation that they lost their scarcity and thus their value. As populations grew and economic output increased - metallic money started to become a problem. Sending someone 10,000 pound of silver was no easy task and it got harder and harder to find enough new metal to satisfy the needs of trade. The answer people found was to use a representation of the precious metal. In England, instead of carrying around a bunch of metal, they would use sticks marked in a specific way and split down the middle to represent the metals. England used this system of "tally sticks" for hundreds of years. <missing a whole pile on interesting, but nonetheless non-essential history> Sticks got to be a bother so someone came up with the idea of using pieces of paper instead. The paper was a promise to pay a specific amount of the metal specific when presented to the issuer of the paper. Basically, an IOU or cheque. At first the IOUs were held for as short a time as possible. People wanted their metals! Again, this became a bother since most people kept all their metals locked up in castles way hell and gone from where the person with the IOU lived. There were some ingenious tradesmen around - goldsmiths. They had to have secure places to keep their own gold and generally worked in towns and cities. People got the bright idea of leaving parts of their metal hordes with goldsmiths. When they wrote their IOUs they were usually in towns and cities conducting business anyway so the receiver didn't have to go so far to get their metal. The goldsmiths liked this because they would get paid to hold gold for people. Goldsmiths, being the smart little devils they were, figured out that they could "lend" portions of the metals they were keeping for people. As long as the depositors didn't all want their money at once, who would notice? When people were short on metals they'd go see the goldsmith and borrow some. Paying it back later with, of course, a little extra for the goldsmith. After a while people started getting comfortable with just passing around the IOUs and leaving the gold at the goldsmith's for safekeeping. After all, giving someone and IOU for a pound of silver was pretty much the same thing as giving them a pound of silver. Thus banks, and paper money, were born. Paper money has no intrinsic value - its only value is in its promise to pay. As long as you believed you would get the face value of the paper back in metals when you wanted it - it was just as good as the metal itself. If you couldn't get the metals, it was worth only as much as the paper it was made from - almost nothing. Goldsmith are incredibly intelligent - they even figured out how to create money (IOUs) without even using the slips of paper. I you wanted to pay someone 10,000 lbs of silver, you could stop by the goldsmith's and tell him to change the ownership note in his ledger from you to the person they wanted to pay - no need for an IOU to be carried around. Goldsmiths, being as clever as they were, figured out they could lend money the same way. You want a loan? They just create a ledger entry and voila, you now have a loan. You can now pay people simply by telling the goldsmith to transfer some of your balance to someone else. it didn't matter that there wasn't enough gold on deposit to cover all the IUOs since everyone was passing around IUOs instead of metal. If you ever wondered why english money is called "pounds sterling" now you know. A one pound note was exchangable for one pound of stirling silver at the goldsmith. Gold Standard A common misconception about the gold standard is that you could only "print" as much money as you had gold. This is incorrect. As the goldsmiths knew, how much you printed didn't matter. What mattered is how many people tried to collect the metal. As long as people were happily trading the IOUs around and not all trying to get the gold at once, you could make as many IUOs as you wanted. The gold standard was only a requirement of what the goldsmith had to give in metal in exchange for an IOU. After a while, metals were rarely exchanged and people realized that the metals themselves weren't actually needed. People were quite happy to exchange IOUs for their entire life without ever handling metal - so why go through all the bother. That is how we got to our currenty money system. That $20 bill you have in your pocket has no actual value - it is only a promise of payment. There is no metal "backing" the value of that IOU. DONT PANIC! (Plagerizing from the Hitchiker's guide - sorry) That promise to pay sitting in your wallet is just as valid for "money" as a precious metal. Remember what money really is - a method of exchange. The value of precious metals is not fixed - It is dependant on scarcity, the scarcer it is, the more people want it. Its intrinsic value is whatever you think its worth. Paper money is identical - its value is whatever you think it is worth. As long as people are willing to exchange a good or service for whatever you're offering, the thing you offer has value. If people wanted seashells, seashells could be money (wampum anyone?). Was that understandable? I tend to ramble a lot... Sorry for all the misspellings!

I've had this discussion several times actually. If I start sounding snarky or condecending, I don't mean to be - just smack me! I will put in more information that you probably need - just so other readers, who might not know, can follow the conversation. First - the Bank of Canada (BOC) would not be creating money, the government would. The BOCs function is to hold the statutory reserves of private banks and loan that money to federal or provincial governments at low interest rates if they need it. Interest collected on these government loans is used to pay the operating costs of the BOC and any excess (profit) is returned to the government (the sole shareholder). For those not familiar with Fractional Reserve Banking: The term fractional reserve refers to the requirement that any bank making a loan must deposit a fraction of that amount with the Bank of Canada as a guarantee. For example, with a 10% reserve requirement, if they make a $1000 loan, they must deposit $100 with the BOC. This serves two functions: first, should the bank fail, this reserve is what depositors could get back. 10% reserve means you'd get $10 back for every $100 you had in the bank. Second, it serves as a limit on how much money a bank can create. If you don't know how banks create money, Click Here The BOC is NOT part of our government. It is a private bank, the government merly holds all its shares. In fact, it was entirely private when it opened in 1932 and the government didn't obtain all the shares until 1935. You just rebutted your own argument. 98% of Canadians (probably more actually) have no idea that 95% of the new money created each year is created by banks - they think the government creates all of it. Truth is, government creates only about 5% of new money and most of that is the bills and coins we carry around. If that proportion changed from 95/5 to 50/50, 98% of the population would have no clue anything was different. Just as they had no clue that it went from 50/50 to 95/5 between WWII and today. The key to confidence in a currency is not in who creates it. It is in the amount that is created. As you point out above, if that company issues shares too many times, the value of the shares is diluted. If it issues only as many as are needed, their value is preserved. When a bank creates $100 in money it also creates a $100 debt. That $100 money has to disappear in order to pay the $100 debt. This is why we've had such a roller coaster ride with recessions and recoveries - after a period of borrowing comes a period of paying back - the money supply swells and shrinks, causing economic mayhem. In finance, Government created money is referred to as "high powered money". Why? Because government created money is not debt. There is no interest owed and it does not have to be paid back. A slow and steady increase in money supply by government, enough to meet the increase in population and output (GDP), makes for a good steady economy. No inflation, no recessions. (Yes Hugo, REAL money would be preferrable to both of these fiat methods, but try to convince the general public of that) The other good thing about Government created money, as apposed to bank created money, is that government SPENDS the money into circulation though infrastructure and programs - reducing the need for tax revenue. Some words from history to ponder: "If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash, or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless situation is almost incredible -- but there it is." - -- Robert H. Hemphill, former Credit Manager The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Senate Document #23, page 102, January 24,1939 The Great Depression is a shining example of people not learning from history. Every time private banks have been allowed majority control over the creation of money, we've had a "great depression". Most people believe the 30's depression was caused by a stock market crash - this is not true! The crash was only a symptom of the economic system of the time, that system was the cause of the depression. Banks, not government, were in majority control of creating money. Fact is, every time banks have gained control over money creation - we have had a "great depression". Hugo is probably familiar with the dire warning about "expansion of credit" given by Ludwig Von Mises during the 20s. Mises saw the depression coming, but nobody would listen. Another popular myth is that FDR's "New Deal" ended the depression. This is absolutely false. Economic recovery did not happen until well into WWII. It was actually accomplished by FDR instituting many banking regulations and greatly increasing the statutory reserve requirement. This greatly reduced bank created money and allowed the treasury department to create more of the money supply. Upwards of 50% during the war, that was reduced to 25% soon after and was slowly whittled down by banking lobbyists over the years. FDR took his inspiration from Abraham Lincoln - who created "Greenbacks" to finance the civil war while the south relied on bank created money. He also took note of how Lincoln made two mistakes: He didn't limit bank created money AND he created too many greenbacks - got some pretty nasty inflation. However, it was the greenback that won the civil war for Lincoln. It wasn't until the 60s, when the newer generation - who hadn't experienced the 20s and 30s, constituted the greatest part of the population that banks were able to convince ($$$) politicians to gut the banking regulations and expand credit once again. Have you never wondered why the depression was worldwide and pretty much at exactly the same time everywhere? Ever wondered why the recovery was the same? Its because the banking changes happened at almost exactly the same time in every country. Banks have been multinational for well over two centuries. Enough babbling for now - any questions? Have I made any errors? P.S. Actually, a bit of trivia - did you know that, prior to the creation of the Bank of England, wooden sticks were used as a type of currency? English Tally Sticks

- First point (from a different thread but still germain) "Minimum wage causes unemployment" is a neo-liberal half-truth. Having a minimum wage does not cause unemployment just because it exists. If we had a minimum wage of 1 cent per day, would that cause unemployment? No? Well then, this statement is incomplete. The actual statement should be "a minimum wage that is too high causes unemployment". Neo-cons (crapitalists) love to spew the former and conveniently forget the latter. The truth is, if we didn't have NAIRU keeping unemployment at DOUBLE what it should be, we wouldn't NEED a minimum wage law. Wages would settle in at a market determined level which, I dare say, would likely result in a higher "lowest" wage than our present "minimum wage". NAIRU gives employers a significant advantage wage wise. When there's TWO people for every job opening, wages are depressed - just like two people wanting to purchase only one item bid up the price, two people trying for the same job bid the wage down. Removing minimum wage without allowing unemployment to reach its natural 3-4% range simply pushes wages far too low - creating unemployment and poverty at the lower end and richer employers at the other. Second, I keep see variations of the neo-con mantra "Government is always bloated and inefficient, private business is always better". This is utter hogwash! This myth gained most of its support in the days when CEOs were making Man of the Year in Time magazine. They were the miracle workers - able to make gargantuan profits with very little capital etc. Well, today many of those CEOs are in prison or facing prosecution for fraud. The vaunted private sector efficiency has been exposed for what it is - a fraud. The real difference between public and private delivery of services is the amount of service delivered. One only has to look at US healthcare to see what I mean. US Hospitals don't have to treat poor people, they are told to toddle off and die. Only rich people get good treatment, people with HMO coverage may or may not get the treatments they need - it depends on the mood of the accountant that adjudicates the medical necessity of the case. Every person treated in US hospitals pays enough to get the hospital a net profit. There are "Charity" and "Public" hospitals in addition to the private ones. The Charity hospitals inexplicably have bankrupted a large portion of the "Charity" patients lately. In Canada we aren't allowed to turn someone away due to lack of coverage. Someone earning a subsistance wage can get more treatment than they'd ever be able to afford if they had to pay out of pocket. Thus there is no profit from such people, there is a loss. The question is - which is more important to society - profit or life? The big suprise is, comparing the "oh so efficient" American system to the Canadian "inefficient" public system, American's pay MORE per capita for healthcare than Canadians, yet receive far less! When it comes to heath care, water, and power, private business has shown its true colours. We cannot trust them to do anything other than get the most profit possible, even if they have to break the law to get it. Energy is another example. Here in BC we've had public power since Wacky Bennet. Our cost for power has always been quite low and yet BC Hydro (all unionized) has always made good profits (which went to fund government). Proposals were made to privatize BC Hydro. In the best case, our energy costs needed to QUADRUPLE and at the same time we'd lose a HUGE amount of income - the energy profits. All we'd get are taxes on the private company. Just WHERE is the economic sense in that? Pay (ultimately) six times as much just so some CEO and Board of directors can get rich? Certain things are simply too important to leave to a pure profit motive. Health, Water, and Energy NEED to be under government control. As for that new party idea, your economics are all wrong. What is needed is to FIX our fractional reserve system and get money creation in check. Hugo is exactly wrong when he says government creates inflation by printing too much money. Our government only creates about 5% of new money each year - the rest if created by PRIVATE banks. Milton Friedman himself said that Monetarism was a bust. He urged governments to go to a 100% reserve - he saw the mistake in letting PRIVATE business handle almost all money creation. Instead, Mulroney went to a 0% reserve, letting banks make (literally) as much money as they want. Once the fractional reserve is repaired, restore the four pillars of finance. Next change the Bank of Canada mandate to match that of Austria's "Magic Pentagon". Its current method of fighting inflation by keeping people unemployed is monsterous AND it strangles growth. Our GDP isn't allowed to grow by more than 3% for fear of inflation, even though we regularly hit 5% regularly with hardly any inflation between WWII and 1974. The key is those damned private banks creating way too much money for our economy to handle. You'll have to make sure everyone in the country realizes you are about to curtail credit and that inflation is going to drop. Stagflation in the early 80s was a result of business raising prices and unions raising wages in the absence of high inflation. It wasn't from greed - we'd had high inflation for years and they had no reason to believe it wouldn't continue. Raise the reserve requirements incrementally, not all at once. As the new money supply from private banks shrinks you have to make sure you create enough money to keep the money supply growing at roughly the same rate as GDP and also satisfy foreign demand for our currency. Too little and you get deflation, too much and you get inflation. While I'd love to go to 100% reserve, 25% should be quite high enough to get the money supply under control. As the reserve builds in the Bank of Canada, do what the bank of Canada was supposed to be doing all this time. As government debts mature, have the Bank of Canada buy them out instead of rolling them over to yet another credit-card interest level loan. We pay over 65 billion a year just in INTEREST on the debt (16-22%!) instead of borrowing from the Bank of Canada at 1% NON compounded! be careful here though. Once unemployment is allowed to drop, the low end wages will start rising - causing wage-push pressures on prices. You'll have to grin and bear it, let the market settle itself out. Next, abrogate every "trade" treaty except GATT. GATT was actually about trade of goods - FTA/NAFTA was about moving vasts amounts of money as fast as possible. This was to benefit currency speculators more than anything. Currency speculators are a blight on the world economy. As an example - We require 88 billion dollars in Canada to carry out normal everyday business. The currency speculators move many TRILLIONS of dollars around. Every movement affecting the value of currencies around the world. What we need is a tax on these currency transactions. Half a percent would be plenty to stop speculators and encourage investors (they are not the same thing). The revenue from even a 0.25% tax would be enough to pay for all our social spending with plenty left over. By this time the government will be flush with cash and you can start paying off foreign debt faster. You can probably consider eliminating the GST by this point. It was created to make up for the lost revenue we used to get when government was making 25%-50% of all new money the country required each year. Thats a good start for ya. "Purist" capitalists will insist on going to commodity based money (silver and gold coin etc) but thats simply not doable in the short term. The concept just too foreign for most people to contemplate (though I'd LOVE to see it done).

IMHO, this is why these same people have no problem with high taxes and taking money from the middle class to buy off the poor. Notice that these are also the same type of people who believe they can buy anything with money. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Popular misconception pushed by the Reform types. Social spending as a portion of GDP has declined drastically for the last 30 years. Money is being taken from both the poor and the middle class and given to the rich - and every year the process is being accellerated. Here's yet another graph of wealth distribution changes since the '80s Its hard to see because the wealth is so small but, the poorest 10% have actually declined drastically in net worth. As of 1999 the upper 50% of our population has 94% of all wealth in the country, the lower 50% has 6% of the wealth. Since then there have been many more tax cuts to business and rich and the distribution is now closer to 96% and 4%. Now explain to me just how the politicians are stealing from the middle class and giving to the poor? edit: I said wealth change since the '70s, its actually since the '80s.

I cannot speak about other provinces but, I've lived in BC most of my life. I lived through the Socreds, NDP, Liberals etc, and I can say that the best two governments we had were the Socreds (Under Wacky - not Junior) and the NDP. I'm not even an NDP fan - I just look at the real facts. The last NDP government gave us decent economic conditions, fairly balanced budgets, good average economic growth, and little decay of working class salaries (though they DID decay). This current libral government immediately put us into BILLIONS of dollars in debt, crushed employment, homlessness has more than quadrupled, unemployment has been the worst in decades. Sure, they CLAIM they created a booming economy that outstrips anything the NDP ever did but, have a look at Statistics Canada - they're lying through their teeth and the Asper Media (Canwest Global) keeps parroting the lies even when faced with unimpeachable evidence from Stats Canada. BC Is indeed pulling out of the Liberal created recession - but only big business and the filthy rich are benefiting from it. Unemployment rates are falling MOSTLY because thousands of people are falling out of the "catchment" of unemployment statistics. If you are on welfare, you are not unemployed. If you are homeless, you are not unemployed. Check Stats Canada, spend a couple days looking at the real data. You'll see the NDP here was MUCH better than the Liberals - unless of course you're in big business or filthy rich.

I'd rather see MORE "normal" people in Parliament myself. We've let political finance and PAY get to the point where "normal" people cannot afford to break into politics at all. Unless they have some previous noteriety and support from an existing party (Ala Chuck), the blue collar types of this country are simply excluded from politics. Is it any wonder we have a government FOR the rich? Our government is OF the rich.

Wiretaps are not illegal if they are on a consenting participant's end. Moe Sihota's taping of a cellphone conversation between two unaware parties was/should have been illegal. Still, it just shows the character of the Reform party. Tape and decry the "corrupt" offer while making their own to Cadman.

I almost agree - Keynes economics coupled with insufficient limits on money creation were the problem. Government did a GREAT job keeping money creation in check from WWII until '67. It was only once limits on Bank created money were removed that we got into trouble - BIG trouble. Are you familiar with the Economic policies in Austria? The Magic Pentagon? I was amazed that there is still a westernized country that had some economic sense. They managed both low inflation AND low unemployment - which the Bank of Canada fraudulently maintains is impossible. I just wish more Canadians would start learning about macro-economics. These criminals (in my view) running our country wouldn't be able to get away with the crap they are doing. Macro economics is NOT a complicated topic at all. Its kind of like Thermodynamics (movement of heat) - the name sounds scary but the topic is actually pretty damned simple. If *I* can grasp it, at least 95% of Canada can too!

The National Post, Calgary Herald and GlobalTV is liberal? This martyrdom of Saint Harper is wearing thin. ------------ If you love Bush, Klein and Harris, you'll love Harper. If you want Canada to resemble those regimes, then there's no changing your mind: you'll vote for Harper. If you want a different vision, minus the corruption, you gotta vote for a Lib-NDP-Green coalition. Those are the two visions of the country. Make no mistake about it. Moreover, none of the resident conservatives on this board have stepped forward to challenge this assessment. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> There is (IMHO) a better choice. The Canadian Action Party http://www.canadianactionparty.ca They're the only party that want to take on the power base behind the corporatization of Canada - the Bank of Canada and the major banks. Unless, and until, the current economic policies are replaced with FAIR ones, you can forget any recovery of social programs. Taxation will continue to fall off the rich and on to the middle class and poor. We need capitalism working for ALL Canadians, not just for banks and their corporate partners.

People see every day on the news what a Reform party government would do. George doubleya Bush is a shining example of the Reform Party plans for Canada. I just hope people that voted Reform in the last election are realising that the Reform Platform is in vitual lockstep with Bush's - the rest of us are.

I think many people simply don't understand what capitalism actually is. This isn't suprising since there are no capitalist countries left in the world. THE authority on capitalism is (was) Ludwig Von Mises. He wrote extensively on the topic and completely described its workings. http://www.mises.org What we have in Canada (and the rest of the world) is Crapitalism. This is Crony Capitalism - subversion of the capitalist system to favour those that are already rich. Fascism is crony capitalism taken to the extreme - or in the words of FDR "The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of the government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power." -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt As incredible as it may seem - Canada is much closer to a fascist state than a democratic one. As my NAIRU post shows, economic policy in Canada is tailored to make the rich richer while making the poor poorer - to the point of destitution. The USA is teetering on the edge of outright fascism - the latest attempt to push it over being the elimination of requirements for a judge to authorize search warrents. The FBI is being given the power of search ans siezure without any judicial oversight. No, I'm not a "left winger" - I'm a capitalist. I want to see capitalism restored to Canada and that means doing things like breaking up our information oligopoly (you know three media companies own nearly all the media in Canada?), Restoring the four pillars of finance (which is now a SINGLE entity and led to things like Enron). The biggest thing that needs to be done is to have fractional reserve banking institutions busted up and their power to create money (I dont mean profit, I mean literally creating new money) severly curtailed. From WWII until the 70s we operated under Keynesian economics. Capitalism with rational limits. Inflation was almost non existant, unemployment was at or very close to FULL employment rates (3%-4%), and the distribution of wealth was FAR better than it is now. In 1967 the Canada Bank Act was gutted. Limits on bank created money were greatly reduced. The great inflation of the 70s was the result (similar measures were taken in almost all western nations at the same time which is why the great inflation was world-wide). Take a look at this graph showing data from Stats Canada. Look what happened to the money supply after the 1967 changes. In 1974 the bank of Canada adopted Monetarism, an economic theory centered around controlling bank created money through demand. The results were horrible! The policy created our devestating recessions! later, the Bank modified its approach. Instead of controlling bank created money directly, it controls unemployment - see my NAIRU post for more on that. So, plainly put - if you're saying "Capitalism is bad, look at what it is doing to the world" you are just wrong. We dont HAVE a capitalist system. Its more akin to fascism than capitalism.

Just read a book by John Perkins, former chief economist for MAIN - an engineering consulting firm deeply involved in "globalization". They worked on major projects such as the Indonesian Electrification project, Panamanian infrastructure, Modernization and Modernization of Saudi Arabia - among many others. Perkins describes his job as: Going into a country, creating highly inflated projections of economic growth from infrastucture projects, and convincing governments to take on loans they couldn't possibly pay off. The resulting debt crisis allowing the corporatocracy and U.S. government to take control of the country through its two weapons, the World bank and IMF. Perkins names names and fills in the blanks. He accuses the Reagan administration of assassinating South American leaders that resisted the economic hit men and tried to keep their countries sovereign. Those that weren't assassinated were treated to a CIA smear campaign. Made out to be corrupt communists and replaced with US Stooges. This isn't simply accusations from some reporter - John Perkins was one of the point men for the process. He rubbed shoulders with Presidents and Prime Ministers, Generalissimos and Kings. This is the real insider's look at what REALLY happened from the 60s to the 90s. Excellent book. Picked mine up and Black Bond Books for about $35 (hardcover). If interested - you shoud read the writings of Joseph Stiglitz - Former senior vice president and chief economist of the world bank. His site is http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/bwi-wt...nk/stigindx.htm Pay close attention to his description of technocrats (third rate graduates from first rate schools). John Perkins IS one of those technocrats. You'll see how Stiglitz frustrations with the apparent stupidity of the World Bank and IMF in handling economic crisis is not misplaced or simply self serving. Stiglitz just didn't realise just how corrupt these institutions and the world governments really are. P.S. Neither Stiglitz nor Perkin's works require any real knowledge of macro-economics. They are written for us normal people. After reading and digesting these works - think hard about the Campbells, Harpers, Kliens, and Harrises in our politics. Look back at the 1980s when Mulroney kept borrowing from foreign lenders at 16%-22% instead of the bank of Canada at 1%. Think hard about Mulroney's elimination of banking reserve requirements - releasing billions of dollars to the big banks when they were bankrupted by defaults in the countries these EHM had bamboozled. Think hard about the billions and billions of dollars that YOU pay to American firms perpetrating this great theft - through taxes given to the World Bank and IMF. P.S. There is no known connection between the people Stiglitz calls technocrats and the poster of the same name on this board! edit: Here's a link to an interview of the author: http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/11/304675.shtml _________________ Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile."- William Lyon Mackenzie King

Cadman is a former Reform MP who still believes in the party's grass roots desire to do as their constituents want. He makes no bones about this. He always said, even when he was a Reformer, that he would vote as this constituents wanted. He is just one of those evil Reform guys all the left wingers so feared. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'm in Mr. Cadman's riding and I genuinely like what he has done in politics - OTHER than joining the reform party. Reform was, and still is, an evil party in my eyes. They are Bush Pioneers in spirit, wanting to jump onto the "Help America Steal Iraqi Oil" bandwagon, abolish labour law, abolish government healthcare, and abolish pensions. Mr. Cadman got into politics because his son was murdered by a young offender. He wanted to see changes to victim's rights and to the justice system when dealing with youth. He differs greatly from the Reform party (changed their name to conservatives - but they're are still, and always will be, the reform party) in that he advocates prevention and intervention - get to the kids before they go "bad" or, if they're already on the path - intervene and try to stear them away. I think Cadman went Reform simply because no other party was willing to talk about youth crime. Reform saw the opportunity to rub it in the other party's faces and jumped at it. Once youth crime left the front of the national stage, they had no more use for him so they parachuted in someone else and shoved him aside.

My name is Pat (male). I hate blogs - love message boards! One place that our education system is sadly lacking in is economics and the history of money. Think about it, where you ever given any instruction about money itself? The links below will explain the nature of money - which to many people is an almost unbelievable suprise. As Klien and his corporatist buddies demonstrated, Federal Policy *IS* within the domain of provincial politics. To that end, I'll describe a policy that is the main reason for the decline of Canada's working class since 1974. Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU). Economists use this term to describe the lowest unemployment rate that does not cause wage-push inflation (too few workers = rising wages as employers outbid each other). There are variations on the name. Non Accessing Inflation Rate of Unemployment, Natural Unemployment rate, some even try to steal the name Full Employment, which is an insult. The Bank of Canada, NOT the federal or provincial governments, is the one that sets our national unemployment rate. Canada has been given a NAIRU of 7.5% and the Bank raises and lowers interest rates to keep us at that unemployment rate. If a politician actually does something to stimulate job growth, the bank raises interest rates and crushes jobs. If we do better, someone else has to lose. Here is a graph of interest rates and unemployment in Canada. The really wiggly dotted line is the change in core Consumer Price Index during the same period. This is hugely exaggerated as, at this scale, the line would have been flat. As you can see, interest and unemployment are inversely proportional while the interest rate changes have ZERO correlation with changes in inflation. Keep this in mind. * Unemployment figures from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Developmend (OECD). CPI and interst rates from the Bank of Canada. NAIRU is a sham. There is a minimum unemployment rate without inflation, and that is between three and four percent. This range is where there is (roughly) one unemployed person for each job opening. You cannot get much lower as this reflects the ongoing "flux" of labour - new entrancts into the labour market, people retiring, people moving between jobs. This is referred to as "full employment" Full employment is a capitalist system's NORMAL unemployment rate.. Between WWII and 1974 Canada spent most of its time in, or close to, full employment with negligible inflation. So why NAIRU? Well, if you read the links below you'll understand how our money supply has been inflating at an alarming rate since the early 70s. This inflating money supply would be causing large prices increases (classic inflation) if it was allowed to fall into the hands of people that would actually spend it. By keeping unemployment at roughly double FULL employment, you keep people from earning a living - reducing the spending capability of the "lower" classes. In addition, Market economics will tell you that two people for every one job means declining real wages - again, reducing the ability for lower classes to spend money. The other really "keen" thing about NAIRU is that falling wages allows for greater profits for employers. If you want to look up NAIRU at some expert sources: World Bank search for NAIRU http://extsearch.worldbank.org/servlet/Sit...Servlet?q=nairu Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/34/2/1863851.pdf Educate yourselves about money itself. You can rail against the injustice of Environmental and Social problems all you want but, until we take back control of the very basis of our economy, NO provincial political party will ever be able to do anything meaningful - they (and we) will be too poor. Whomever you vote for, write your candidates and demand to know their position on NAIRU. Demand that they speak up to the Federal government and get economics into the public debate. More information on the topic http://politicsofmoney.net http://www.comer.org http://www.canadianactionparty.ca _________________ Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile."- William Lyon Mackenzie King