blueblood

May as well have those occupiers in the mall, there are a lot of other people and groups occupying them, what's one more.

Credit isn't bad when you have the money to pay for it. Heck a person can do online shopping, get some free bookkeeping, and a free vacation when they use their credit responsibly.

Those are two ways of doing things. One makes everyone richer, the other makes a small group richer and gives the appearance of wealth.

the benefits of production aren't passed around "evenly" as well. No, inflation happened. The more money around chasing things, the more prices rise to capture all that money. That and people being extremely foolish and not saving eir money which exacerbates the problem. Also, while a few people here were able to raise a family on a single salary, many people in Asia lived almost as medieval peasants. Also with two people in the family working, that created some inflation because with everybody having two incomes there was more money floating around to buy things. If closing the borders to trade happens, growth will slow to a crawl and we would have a Japan problem. If leftism rises again, then our economy won't improve.

What about desert storm, that was in *gasp Iraq!

Keep holding my breath for what?

Things are getting pretty good in Asia these days. The richer those Asians get, the better it is for everyone, especially Canadians. They will invest when the market isn't a bloody roulette table right now. There's more to investing than day trading, the fact is that the western world is in a huge correction now, labour is too expensive here and is going to a lower cost jurisdiction, and they are getting richer. It's simple economics, consumers want the lowest prices so companies that make products will try to make them as cheap as possible, part of that involves finding the cheapest productive labour. Or we could have it like with supply management. No imports or exports, a chosen few are allowed to produce at a set wage, and the supply has quotas which means consumers have to take the price offered to them. Meanwhile other countries around the world are poorer because there is no capital flowing to them. Cripes, the left wants foreign aid and for people in poorer countries to become richer. When that happens in the most efficient way (the market), they get upset because someone over here all of a sudden is jobless. You can't have your cake and eat it too, there is not enough wealth generated for everyone to have the lifestyle of a doctor or a lawyer in north America, the sooner people realize that, the sooner we can go forward.

Have fun with poverty then.

This is what happens when people blow their money on consumption, rather than savings. Every generation they have to start fresh instead of having something passed down and getting larger with every generation. Western Canada is more peachy because our economy is based more on production and less on consumption like the rest of the continent.

True, but I haven't seen billboards with job offers.... Yet......

You want to go to the way things worked, go back to the tax structure of the 1880s. That worked outstanding, and there wasn't massive gov't spending, yet the USA became the most powerful country in the world. Those 1% create jobs and invest money and in case you haven't noticed, there are many country around the world that enjoy a similar standard of living to the USA and don't cost as much to live in. If the USA wants to keep that 1% Saving, spending, and investing their money, they would be wise to provide incentive to keep them there. The fact that china has 8% growth is a perfect example of what happens when the USA prices itself out of the job market. Americans are acting foolishly, they're swallowing the snake oil people like you are selling them and are now paying the price.

Yes saskatchewans unemployment rate at 3.7% and billboards with job offers in Alberta and Saskatchewan are really screwing up the country...

Oh I don't know about that. There are some big global structural problems in the global economy that will take a long time to fix. If Harper can keep unemployment where it is, he will have done well, which will be tricky because ontario's jobs can be done in Asia. The global economy is harpers main concern and could very well sink him next election.

Oh and quebecor and bell media do release their financial info. You want to be a publically traded company, you MUST publish your financial statements.

Judging by all the new shiny iron at the machinery dealer, I think we will be voting for the cons like we always have been. 60 wheat board zealots are a rounding error.

The only thing I can say about the difference between the Forbes article and your charts is that they must be using different metrics. I mean these two guys aren't going to go and publish an article in Forbes based on hot air. I don't know what those metrics are, if Fannie and Freddie came late to the game, according to the article, they went on one hell of a bender.

You can thank technology and increased wealth generated in society for longer lifespans, not gov't spending. You can set your guilt trip back to stun, it's by people listening to the likes of you that society is broke today. Medicine sometimes tastes bad.

Forbes This shows that countrywide and the likes had only 5%. However it supports your claim that CRA banks you like to state accounted for 3%. The culprits it seems were our best friends Fannie and Freddie and low Interest rates. They dealt with the dot com bubble the wrong way by trying to inflate their way out of that recession. By kicking the can down the road. They would have been better off going through the hangover in 2001 by allowing the market to liquidate the bad assets. The bankers/investors were the students who drank the spiked punch. The low interest rates explain the growth of the bubble, however our friends gov't intervention explain the low quality of the mortgages which put the bubble on steroids.

I think you can compare it to a body, some people think that getting through withdrawal means shooting up again to numb the pain. As for getting too mad at the banks, yes they got drunk like high school kids at prom drinking spiked punch and acted like buffoons, and they've been chastised for it, but you have to look at who spiked the punch, and that would be a do gooder government. That involves CRA, complex regulations, housing tax deductions, and fooling around with the interest rates. The best regulation would be a higher interest rate at that time and gov't staying out of the housing sector.

It would be like a heroin addict going through rehab and dealing with withdrawal. Painful at first, but gets the person healthy in the long term.

Cuts in civil service, welfare, pension, e.i, healthcare, entitlements, gov't salaries, Medicine tastes bad, but you gotta swallow it. Its going to have to be swallowed when the boomers become geriatrics.

Wrong, the period of the most rapid economic growth was in the late 1800's when income tax was ZERO. Those "high" tax rates in the 40's to the 80's had loopholes big enough to drive a bus through. Reagan in the 80's needing gov't revenue dropped the rates and closed many of the loopholes. Voluntary investment which means getting a return on investment has proven time and again to be the most efficient way to get out of poverty, hell its how we got out of the dark ages.

He was wrong because he didn't anticipate the fed dropping the interest rate to 1% to inflate their way out of the recession. It wasn't just schiff, there were others sounding warning bells. Dropping the interest rate like that, just kicked the can down the road to now and just made things worse. He has a point about the problems with too much of the economy based on consumption funded by debt. However, that was one pillar of the problem, there were others including the regulation scheme the democrats brought in. The other being ordinary people and their sense of entitlement, and bankers stupid enough to lend to them. Like all other things, it was human error caused by trying to be mr. nice guy.

You guys in central Canada like big gov't. They do have to win an election.

My link My link What is interesting is that How small the average farm is. You'll have to tell me what huge is. The smaller guys can survive if they adapt. There are smaller guys who make far more per acre than I do because their business model allows for it. For example the growing halal meat market in Canadian cities.