Moonbox

That's about the dumbest comparison you could have made. WWI grievances with Britain have literally NOTHING to do with the fact that equalization formulas on the most very BASIC of levels are meant to help poorer provincial governments. Now that Newfoundland is becoming one of the richer provinces, they STILL believe they are entitled to the same sort of federal transfer payments as when they were the armpit of Canada. Danny Williams is the equivalent of a rich man crying that his welfare was cut off. The Atlantic Accord be damned, it was stupidly signed by a pandering previous prime minister (wow alliteration) and was COMPLETELY against the best interest of most of Canada. The Newfoundlanders can cry all they want and that's their place to do so, but it's pure idiocy for them to expect Ontario/Alberta etc to continue to subsidize their revenue when they are already doing better for themselves than most of Canada.

Not necessarily. Remember the Cadman Affair? Taxpayer money 100% wasted.

I suspect most people will look at this as an exception. I anticipate no repercussions for this and I think people are just making a big deal about it.

The fact that you wasted your time finding and linking an article from the National Post is commendable but it doesn't change the fact that it's frivolous news about a non-issue that nobody cares about. I don't deny the story because I don't know enough about it nor do I care. The lack of discussion this decidedly boring topic has elicited hopefully shows you that constantly linking Toronto Star newspaper articles and adding clichéd one liners to summarize them is not going to win anyone over. Add a little more depth to your postings. At one point we expected it of you.

I think political partisanship has a lot to do with the survey results. If the budget was done up by Liberals we'd probably see something like 4/10 Cons like it but 9/10 Liberals did. If it was NDP we'd see 0/10 Cons liked it and 10/10 dippers did.

I agree but it's not something that's going to change until someone has a majority.

Exactly. Idiotic newspapers like the Star are less concerned with actual news than they are with pushing an agenda.

I didn't see it and I read the Globe and check the CBC.net daily. Even so, does anyone actually care anyways?

Hahahahahaha....Not only are you bringing up mundane, frivolous nonsense nobody cares about, but you're quoting the Toronto Star (Liberal propaganda machine) as a credible source of anti-CPC news. Hold on, I'll go see what dirty news I can dig up in the Calgary Herald about the Liberal Party.

I don't think I've EVER seen more of a cheer leader on these forums than you when it comes to Iggy. Politicians should never be worshipped the way you worship Ignatieff nor the way the Americans are already worshipping Obama. He's been opposition leader for maybe two months now and has largely done NOTHING but you're talking about him like he's some sort of messiah. Your praise for him has been based on fluffy qualitative nonsense and he's done nothing to distinguish himself from a right-wing CPC member. You've regularly failed to ignore that he's pro-torture, was pro-Iraq, lived longer outside of Canada than within and that he was one of the FEW opposition MP's who regularly supported an extension to the Afghanistan mission. He's the Americanization of the Liberal Party and deep down you know it. With that said, I wouldn't cry if he became PM. It'd be like changing leaders from Harpernator model 101 to a disguised T1000 model (forgive the Terminator reference I just watched the movie). There were 1 million fewer voters in 2008 because people pretty generally didn't care. The gross CPC vote was down 3% but their SHARE of the vote increased. The BQ vote was down 11% and their share of the vote went down, and the losses for the Liberals were STAGGERING. You're absolutely right in that Harper totally blew his majority. Unlike you I can find fault in the man regardless of the fact that I voted for him. He's a snake and occasionally gaffs pretty big like the Quebec arts funding balogna. With that said, I still think he's better than the alternatives. Between the CPC right-wing hypocrite amero-wannabe and the LPC right-wing hypocrite amero-wannabe I'll take the one who at least felt Canada was worth living in the last 30 years.

Unfortunately for you and your idiotic comments, George Bush (who I agree was a TERRIBLE president) is not responsible for the economic collapse. The economic collapse can be blamed on the democrats in Washington who fought to make sure anyone anywhere could qualify for cheap borrowing that even a 3 year old could see couldn't repay. George Bush actually tried make the regulations more strict but from what I've read was blocked by a largely democratic Congress or Senate or whatever.

I agree with most of what you said. I went to a sushi restaurant a few weeks ago called Niko Niko. I asked the Japanese waitress what that meant. She laughed and told me that "Niko" means cat, and that my BBQ eel was in fact kitten. She promptly then explained that Niko Niko (written like that) actually means "A bubbling sensation" or something and that I'm actually eating real sea food. Most people don't care about a few offhand racial jokes. They're generally just jokes. People need to understand words and statements in the context that they were presented. If it was just in fun and joking, then leave it at that. If it was inconsiderate, rude or hateful, THEN get upset but otherwise lighten up. It's the people that can't or refuse to distinguish that have their underwear all bunched up.

Yes our current debt load can be blamed largely on Trudeau (curse his name). Mulroney certainly didn't help but the MATH proves that Trudeau's deficits are the reason why people vomit at the mention of deficits today. For the record I also think it's extremely optimistic to assume the federal deficit will be gone in 5 years.

The linkage exists, but what you imply is an EXTREMELY dubious leap in logic. Americans didn't negotiate Free Trade with us just because we're good friends. They did it because it was to their economic advantage and still is.

Yeah but this is about as important as the CPC retaining the anti-gay vote. Who else is organized labour going to turn to? The Republicans? Maybe, but not likely anytime soon. Besides, organized labor in the US is getting stepped on hard with the bailout packages. See Big Three Automakers. Because a lot of the animosity against free trade comes from American workers not being able to compete with $5/day wages in Mexico/China. Canada is similar in both labor standards and wages thus the free trade agreement between us is more a tool to create economies of scale than anywhere else in the world. Which is something that could be rectified easily. There have already been high-level talks with the EU discussing Canada's inclusion in the FTA there. That's something the Americans probably don't want. Whether or not foreign investment helped exploit Canadian resources, they are nonetheless Canadian resources and nobody is going to stop the provincial governments from targetting them with royalties like Alberta did with oil. Make no mistake here. Just because the US is a bigger economy doesn't mean they have don't have a lot to lose here. Relative to the size of our economy, yes I suppose so. On a dollar per dollar basis likely not and the long term repercussions would be that historically the US's closest and most important ally and trading partner would start looking for new friends and new places to sell their vital resources. I still think it's a lot of rhetoric but we'll see. Obama's a fool if he wants to get in a trade war. He has very little to gain (increased support of the crybaby labor unions) vs severe and long term diplomatic repercussions and easily billions and billions of lost cross border trade.

It really depends but I generally agree with you. Something like Bruce Nuclear is obviously providing a benefit for everyone. Other projects, like Go Transit etc, is something the provinces and federal government help pay for that people in Thunder Bay ultimately see little benefit for. There are trickle effects that are a little less obvious but the fact remains that a lot of infrastructure spending and benefits is not distributed in a way that everyone is better off for it. Interest rates are so low right now that I doubt we'll see a lot of that going on. I work for a bank and I can tell you the majority of GIC's are being cashed in right now instead of the opposite happening. I think that would be an ideal rather than something we can expect to happen, you're right. That's the problem. We all support infrastructure spending (mostly), it's just there are other ways to stimulate the economy along with that.

i'm okay with some infrastructure spending as well. What my problem with stimulus spending is that our governments seem unable to avoid the useless spending on social programs that end up being perpetually wasted dollars. There are some good ones out there, like EI for example, but a lot of the money is pretty much wasted from an economic perspective. The reason why tax cuts are a better stimulus item is because it's FAIR. The problem with social spending is that it provides NO real benefits to the vast majority of people. Infrastructure is a little better but it takes longer to take effect (over a year sometimes) and once again, not everyone benefits. A lot of communities don't benefit from huge infrastructure projects because an unproportional amount of that money inevitably ends up being spent near large urban centres. There's a reason why everyone but the Tories do so badly outside of the big cities. Finally, to assume that nobody is going to spend the extra money they get from tax cuts is just silly. A large portion of people will spend some or all of it. I'd probably be one of them.

Not to suggest that you are talking out of your backside or anything (actually I am), but the wars in east had next to nothing to do with the free falling economy. I'm sure they didn't help, but they're certainly not a main cause in ANY WAY. Tax cuts also help the economy. They always have. Deficits are another matter, but anyways... At least you were on to something as far oil prices were concerned. That might have been the last straw but you can lay MOST of the blame for the economic collapse on idiotic lending practices and garbage regulation insisted upon by the US democrats (they're all idiots, not just Bush and the republicans). The american banks and government were allowing stupid people to get stupid mortgages they couldn't afford which amounted to countless billions of dollar being lost when (big surprise) the mortgages started going bad. The amount of money that dissapeared from the economy when that happened was catastrophic and it caused all sorts of ripples.

You're absolutely right. The budget is a hard pill to swallow. I was expecting deficits of maybe $10B. $30B seems outrageous to me. I think the US deficit is even more so. Either way, whether it was CPC or coalition stimulus, we were going to see $30+ billion of it. I think this is a classic example of stabilization policy overkill. Somehow the whole world has decided to make the same mistake. When I support Harper's stimulus over a coalition's similar spending, I do so only insofar as I directly benefit from it more. It's pretty much assured that nothing the Bloc or NDP propose is going to do me any good so I'll take the tax cuts, however temporary they may be. Haha no. I only guessed because you mentioned LLP and KPMG. I thought lawyer or accountant might be a good guess. I wasn't implying anything sorry.

Trade restrictions with Canada will do the US no good. I can understand with Mexico, Asia and Europe, but Obama has nothing to gain by preventing Canadian goods from entering the US. We do indeed have quite a bit of clout as far as trade is concerned. We're their biggest trading partner, we're sitting on the world's biggest fresh water and second biggest oil reserves and we have minerals and metals up the wazoo. A trade war will blow up in his face and quickly alienate a good portion of ours and other countries.

PT again you've failed to really make any point other than that you don't like Harper. You have all sorts of colorful words and clichés, but you just natter on friviolously. You'll take an excuse you can to criticize Harper, which is totally fine if you want to do that, but back it up if you want to be taken at all seriously. Like I wrote above, there were NO actual nuclear experts who deemed Chalk River an impending disaster. None of them are worried now either. A Liberal appointed BUREAUCRAT (as in she is in no way an expert in nuclear science) got fired for being an partisan idiot who tried to make a media spectacle about a practically non-existant safety threat. What a scandal.....

They overrode a Liberal-appointed safety regulator who every nuclear safety expert who weighed in on the subject believed to be overreacting HUGELY. The safety regulator, in this case, was a appointed bureaucrat loyal to the previous Liberal government. She did not have the support of ANY actual nuclear safety expert on the matter and that pretty much sums it up. I think the actual 'risk' to the Chalk River plant was if the biggest earthquake the world has ever had was suffered beneath it. For the regulator's scenario to unfold, not only would you have to have this massive earthquake, but you'd have to have virtually every safety feature in the plant fail and have the people working there be asleep and not do anything to shut the plant down.

Why would I explain it? If you understood what I said about inflation etc you more than likely already know what Keynesian Theory is and I'd be wasting my breath. The debate of how much money we need to pump into the economy is way up in the air. The size of the deficits being projected are absolutely staggering from my point of view but it looks like it was going to happen regardless of who was in power. I went basic on you 'assuming' (yeah I know) that you might not even have Economics 101 under your belt. Since apparently you're in the 'sector' (whatever that means), maybe you could clarify what your points of contention are? Are we talking about idiotic lending practises in the US? Unsustainable auto manufacturing and over-capacity? Foolish and manipulative futures trading (oil)? Massive scale financial fraud and lousy accounting? Give us a place to start, because I'd love to debate with someone outside of my immediate circle who actually knows something about it. Lawyer?

Which is exactly what you should have done. Greed, ignorance and a total lack of common sense sadly did not propel the masses to that sort of simple wisdom. TD stayed out of the sub prime mess for the simple reason that their CEO and chief economist didn't really understand the deals being in made. If you don't understand and investment, don't put your money into it.

I already did. First off, the spending is obvious stimulus and will help prop up otherwise failing manufacturers. This you understand already I'm sure. Second, which I've already explained, the spending is tied directly with monetary policy. When you run massive deficits like the US and EVERY other western nation basically is doing right now, it causes inflationary fears. Deficits like in the USA are NOT going to get paid off easily and the best way to make sure your government can manage the debt is to start printing money and keep interest rates low. When you start printing money, the value of money already in circulation decreases. This causes the currency to fall in comparison to other currencies. This doesn't happen immediately, but you'll see inflation rates fly in the next couple of years. To relate that back to exports, we all know that a cheap currency makes your export goods cheaper. I assume you also know that the Canadian dollar trading at par with the US dollar put a lot of manufacturers right out of business this year. IF the Canadian government DOESN'T put some inflationary pressure on our dollar over the next few years we'll all of the sudden see it trading over the US dollar and the US will import things cheaper from other countries. That's the basic idea at least.