Moonbox

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.

The coalition was an idiotic idea for the Liberals. It was another retarded scheme (like the Green Shift) concocted by Bob Rae and bozo Dion. A lot of the Liberal MP's didn't even want anything to do with it. I'll give my Liberal MP credit for being one of the few who publicly voiced his dislike for to coalition. It would have been political suicide for the Liberals to share a cabinet with the NDP for the simple reason that the vast majority of Canadians barf at the mention of the NDP's name. It would have completely alienated the moderate right (which is what most Canadians are) and Ignatieff himself wanted nothing to do with it. Don't act like it was Dion's fault it fell apart. It was a stupid idea altogether. By 'meeting him' you mean he shook a few people's hands, said 1 or two things, and then walked away. Once again, your opinion is based on a unshakeable foundation...... In your terms,

'Fairly conservative' means nothing unless you have a basis of comparison. Conservative for a wealthy retiree might be blue chip equity. For a retiree whose savings might just BARELY give them the income they want it would likely be a lot less equity based. Conservative for someone who can barely afford their rent payments might be nothing scarier than GICs. It all depends on much you understand, how much you can safely lose without your lifestyle suffering and how long of a time horizon you have. Blue chip stocks are by no means a safe investment. They are SAFER than a tech, bio or energy fund in general but even the best and biggest blue chips have giant value fluctuations. Look at GM.

Pot is about as much of a gateway drug as alcohol is. It's the 'taboo' that makes it even more of a gateway drug. I don't think it should be illegal because already it's BARELY monitored by the police aside from large scale grow-ops. If the police and legislature cared about clamping down on marijuana they could patrol university neighborhoods and catch people by the dozens. You might as well make it legal and tax it and regulate it like tobacco. Personally, I couldn't care less, but I think it's easier to argue the pro-cannabis case than the opposite as far as intelligent reasoning is concerned.

If all you can pull off is childish emoticons you really show what your arguments are worth. You can't refute what I said because you don't understand the first thing about the economy. Way to talk out of your butt.

and then it affects the markets the following morning. Like I said, it makes no difference.

It's not illegal at all I don't think. It was criticized by Layton and whoever the Liberal Finance critic was as 'irresponsible' to release before the markets opened. The thought process behind this is that it would start the trading day on a negative note. You have to ask yourself what difference it'll make, however, whether it's released in the morning or afternoon. Zero.

Yeah I have no idea why the right is so full of religious nuts all the time. If they'd just give up on issues like gay marriage, abortion and stem cell research (which the vast majority of Canadians support) they'd do infinitely better.

Madmax unfortunately for you sarcasm and what you perceive as wit don't make up for ignorance and a complete lack of understanding of the topics at hand... Okay so...American stimulus is okay because they can control their borders? Canadian stimulus is bad because we can't? The borders really have nothing to do with stimulus and deficits, nevermind the fact that Canada CAN control its border just as effectively as the US can. We're also ignoring the fact that when the US runs massive deficits, their currency depreciates, which hurts our export market because the Canadian dollar will cost more. Part of the reason Canada HAS to spend is to make sure Canadian exports remain competitive. Uh huh...and I suppose your plan will be to come up with a plan right? Initiate the 50 day plan so that you have a plan that will be a good plan right? Yeah. I thought so.

My thoughts are that the Roman Catholic Church has no business in politics. The moral high ground of the Catholic Church dissapeared like 1500 years ago when it became hypocritical and self-serving. The fact that an RC bishop has decided the oil sands are bad is about as consequential as an angsty teenage boy with make up doing the same thing. Nobody cares. Only 26% of Albertans are Catholic anyways. 40% are protestant, 25% have no religion. Even most of the Catholics won't care.

Harper's hypocrisy aside, there's absolutely nothing wrong with leaking planned budget details. There's no reason for it to be a secret other than the opposition may not like that they don't have first dibs on the 'spin' they get to put on announcements.

I'm almost certain it will pass and we will see another year of pre-election type government bickering between the Liberals and Conservatives, while the NDP and Bloc will continue nattering about nothing anyone cares about.

Yeah I'm with madmax on this one...You're like 2 months late almost posting this. Not only is it outdated, what you proposed PT is not at all what happened. It's just more wishful thinking on your part.

That's not really at all what I confirmed. What I confirmed is that intelligent people who make it their business to understand the market and the economy will generally do a LOT better than unintelligent and ignorant people. A lot of 'rich' people lost a LOT of money as well. I didn't steal anything from anyone, nor am I rich. I'm simply educated in economics and finances. Of course people who don't have a clue what's going on will conclude that someone 'stole' from them when their investments go down 30-40%, but perhaps part of the problem was that these people: A ) Don't understand what they're investing in or what the risks are, AND/OR B ) Don't pay attention to the market or their investments. It's their own fault in large because although their broker or FI sold them the investments, it's not really their job to hold the client's hand and teach them step by step how the economy works. I feel bad for some of the retirees who are going to have to go back to work because their investments tanked, but at the same time I have to shake my head at how stupid it was to have your life savings, which you cannot afford to lose, in an aggressive and risky investment portfolio. DUhH!?

How is someone even supposed to respond to that? It's something I can't prove to you and you can't disprove. It was as easy as, "Why the f*** is oil trading at $140 a barrell all of the sudden? I'll cash out now thanks. I'm deeply sorry you floundered in the market but the sub prime mortgage crisis began in 2007 and a lot of people watched in wonder when, despite how bad things looked going forward, a lot of stuff was trading at record highs. Believe me, people made FORTUNES over the last few months short selling and exercising options. I don't expect you to have the slightest clue what I'm talking about though so I probably shouldn't even bother.

Actually my knowledge of economics is extremely good. I work in the industry, I went to school for it, I anticipated the market crash and made money off of it. What do you want to know about? Do you want to know how the sub-prime mortgage crisis occured? Do you know why oil prices were so high in the summer and how both of those combined to crash our economy in Sep/October? What don't you understand?

No, but it's something myself, nor you nor "Progressive Tory" (I still don't understand why he called himself that) likely understand it all that well. We don't know exactly what was done, or what exactly the 'laws' are, and to firmly decide that something criminal has happened is just stupid. It's just like the Cadman affair. The Liberals are so eager to fling mud that they'll accuse Harper of bribing the man even though he publicy asserted this did not happen and then his wife ran as a CPC MP afterwards. Seriously? I'll allow there is a POSSIBILITY that something criminal or fishy happened, but I'm not going to firmly claim it as fact until it's been proven. A lot of the people crying foul here are posting less on fact and more on wishful thinking.