Yaro

I agree, however I have always been wary of too much investment inflow as it tends to drive instability. This is technically true but in reality rather deceptive, while the Japanese are the single biggest holders of direct holders of US exchange reserves the Chinese have a far more diverse interest in the US markets as a whole. When we consider the combination of the trade gap and the pegged Yuan along with the massive foreign ownership issues in the US that never seem to come up (almost 125 billion now). There is also the fact that the US's biggest creditor there own banks holding a value of 2.3 trillion and the US government putting nearly twice as much money into circulation and it begins to look like the worlds reserve holder is trying to devalue there way out of debt not something anyone holding there dollar is anxious to see. While it is true that both have a vested interest in propping up the dollar there is a great deal of speculation that as early as next month China will revalue the Yuan, and if that is a complete revaluation the inflation in North America (the US in particular) will be huge and China who will no doubt have to start looking domestically to make up much of the shortfall for consumer consumption would have no real reason to try to encourage the US's currency as they will simply be an entity which while compete for those all important international oil markets. I agree that this has been the case for some time but the USD has lost ground since 1960 to both the Yen and the Euro (and previously the Mark) and both of these currencies can at this time be considered considerably harder then the USD. It should also be noted that the European economy is offset with the American one for growth and so the last year or so has very much been a peak for the USD where as the Euro has been in more moderate period and has been considered somewhat softer thanks to the reasons you outlined. I agree, however I do not believe the relationship runs both ways. While a strong dollar is ideally a sign of a strong economy, a strong dollar is not always a good thing for an economy. I have personally never been a fan of measuring a countries wealth through GDP, it’s a manipulative indicator. GDP is as much a function of economic freedom as it is of actual wealth and tends to ignore some important distribution notes which affect an economies overall efficiencies. While the much higher GDP of the US (supported by there higher economic freedom) suggests that there economy could withstand more debt I would argue the opposite and suggest that the stability offered by the Canadian system should create far more investor confidence. I much prefer the measure of per capita debt and in that Canadians now owe 16k CSD while Americans owe more then 26k USD, a very substantial difference. Most of what we are debating though is personal opinion as to optimal direction for the Canadian economy, I think we can both agree however that we could have done much much worse then we have over the last 15 years.

Good reply, while it is true that the trade weighted value of goods has remained reletively constant that has little actual effect on the trade effects of reducing the value of goods. while most of your point is true that has no actual relevence when discussing the effect that it has on investment flow. The greenback has remained the global currency only at the behest of the Chinese who could crash it at will, OPEC has continuely pointed out that it may move to the Euro sooner rather then later rather then experience the transitonary pains associated with the eventual crash of the US markets, this would defacto make the Euro the global reserve currency. Its not surprising that the interest rates in Canada would rise faster because our economy is stronger, the US economy despite the measures taken has seen only very modest growth. I agree that keeping the currency artifically low makes Canadians poorer reletively but this further encurouges many of the actions by investors that help to strengthen our economy as a whole. I disagree though that currency value is a good sign for economy strength, the US has great currency value but a major baloon of an economy. They keep printing money to try to shake China, but so long as the Euro keeps falling and we keep depressing our dollar its not really long term relevent. I understand your point but until we are much further along on our own debt issues (which still remains serious) I think the course we are taking is the responsible one.

Your right when the Americans asked us to stop making the aero we should have just made it and sold it to whoever wanted to buy it, that would have both kept NASA from beating the USSR to the moon and would have kept engineers and a major technology company in Canada, certienly a sad day all around.

Actually, the value of the dollar is mainly dependent on largely emotional investment runs in the short run and confidence in national fiscal policy in the long run. The Canadian federal government can be given a great deal of credit for the latter. Keeping the value of the dollar low is certainly not "silly", it has allowed us to keep an edge on our only real trading partner of consequence, it has been a large part of what has lured a great deal of the manufacturing allotted to north America as a whole. There is also the natural bias of the American markets for internal consumption and the border costs which are eliminated by maintaining the dollar at a reduced level. Short of tearing up NAFTA and having a major economic realignment this is the best policy and has proven to be such as it has resulted in the strongest economy in world. Secondly only to a Saudi Arabia which is looking increasingly dishonest in there evaluations of there own reserves. Hardly, the liberals are the single biggest reason for Canada's economic resurgence, while the Americans moronic fiscal policy and the rising commodity markets are major factors, even combined they don't make up for the investor confidence that has been created in the Canadian market. The US dollars value is 50% of the relative fluctuation, this is a mathematical reality. As to the American dollar, its value is being carried by the pegged Chinese currency and has maintained its strength despite the US's best efforts to devalue it. This has resulted in an extremely volatile currency market. It’s a circumstance Canada should be taking advantage of by matching the US increases in currency production. But that is the only complaint I can really think of over the last several years of this government’s fiscal policy which has on the whole been brilliant. I am not quite sure what you are suggesting they could have done here? We have maintained a relatively stable economy through this boom and have actually had a much smaller boom then the US, the reality is that we followed suit so that we wouldn't be hurt by to large an outflow of investment capital. This wasn't really in our power to control as we were just maintaining our advantage on the US, again they did the right thing, in fact the only thing they really could of. I do agree however that the housing bubble will pop and personal bankruptcies will skyrocket much as they did in the 80's but I would bet money that they won't be even close to what we will see from our neighbors to the south. This is one of the unfortunate realities of having free trade with a market 10x your size right next door.

Your post betrays a dramatic misreading of the current reality as it applies to medical care in Canada. None of the items you listed in this paragraph are issues of efficiency, in fact they are just the opposite. Long Lines, slow treatment As any efficiency expert will tell you long lines are a sign of efficiency, they are a primary signal of low downtime. Systems with no lineups are the ones that tend to be inefficient as workers have a great deal of downtime. Understaffed Facilities Understaffed medical facilities will result in increased efficiencies so long as they don't result in the disuse of property (something that has happened) or less then optimal use of other resource types (something that hasn't happened). Thus so long as efficiency is limited by other factors (equipment and space) there isn't really any argument for "understaffed Facilities. Although there are inefficiencies created by the disuse of facilities primarily operating bays, this is a sign of under funding not systematic dysfunction. This paragraph is the heart of your misunderstanding of our problem. The healthcare system in Canada has been rated by the WHO as being near the best in the world in efficiency. Once again long lineups are a sign of an efficient system. Every major indicator of high levels of efficiency and critical outcome effectiveness such as long life expectancy are at close to the highest levels in the world. While it could be argued that Canadians as a whole have become used to an unsustainable level of healthcare as supported by massive borrowing in the 70's and 80's it is far more likely that budget cuts taken to deal with the massive deficits created during that time has created a circumstance where all Canadians have to make due with less. Your anger is more appropriately directed at the people who put Trudeau and Mulroney into office (although Trudeau did have some excuses for his spending). The medical system is regularly overviewed by efficiency experts, as I said before our numbers are solid it is the expectations that are the issue. As to the value of MBA's, they aren't worth the scrap of paper that supposedly qualifies them. There is no single educational stamp used in society today as uselessly overblown as the MBA. That is because there is no simple answer, there is no real problem with the system that can be easily fixed. As for the sponsorship scandal, well that’s a miniscule amount of money, an amount so small it would have no appreciable effect on the medical system which requires an increase of between 20-25 billion dollars a year to begin meeting the expectations of the majority of Canadians.