Moonbox

He could be jailed as a defector. It's unlikely that the current Russian government would resort to KGB style tactics and send a hit-squad to chase down a low-level agent 12 years later.

Take it a step further. I know you're capable of making the GIANT leap in logic here. What guarantees do you think Canada was going to get from a bankrupt manufacturer? They have no equity. They have twice as much debt as equity. You cannot get a solid guarantee from that. Not only does GM have nothing to back up the debt, the terms of the agreements were set by the Americans, specifically, Obama. Once again, what sort of plan do you think we were going to come up with in a year? Seriously? Experts have been GUARANTEEING us GM's collapse since the turn of the century but you can't just say, "We need more diversified manufacturing." and get that in less than a year. It doesn't work that way. Stop getting so butt-hurt about it. I'm not saying that it's their fault. Maybe some of the other people here are but the Tories are the ones negotiating the agreement. With that said, the Opposition (Liberals included), were demanding the stimulus and they voted FOR the stimulus. Given that the Americans were dicating the terms of bailing out the automakers, and given that the Liberals have voted for the spending, it's ridiculous for you and Ignatieff to turn around and criticize the Tories for it after the fact. That's all I'm saying, but you and I have already argued about this stuff at length. I'm saying the deal is a stinker for taxpayers in the USA and Canada. It could have been much better. Blame the terms of the deal on Obama though, rather than hacking it up and blaming it on Harper. The Canadian government had the choice to play ball or not play ball, and there wasn't going to be a lot of negotiating. We got as fair a deal as the Americans did, but Obama sold the Americans out and by extension us too. I believe that Canada and the US should have bailed out the automakers, but ONLY as an investment. Throwing money at useless Union benefits, and getting suckered into aweful equity agreements should never have been part of the deal. If we did this properly, and the governments came out with a functional and profitable GM in 15 years, we might be able to recoup most of our losses. The way it is now we're going to get nothing back and honest Canadians are going to be subsidizing greedy union pensions and benefits. This is a TOTAL loss for taxpayers and it's all a result of Obama pandering to auto-based swing states.

What he was doing was about as criminal as the lowliest of CSIS agents as far as we know. Again, what criminal activity was he a part of? He was on the wrong side of the Cold War. That's all. I agree with that at least.

At least they're sticking to their guns. You can't really call them partisans for abiding by their own rules until they start airing LPC commercials.

Ignatieff doesn't like 26 year-old bimbos taking the blame for being bimbos. HAHAHAHAHAHAH! KingIggy, please, do you have any more intellectually devoid commentary? Your posts carry the same sort of intelligence as a Fox News smear on Obama.

Jdobbin give it a rest. 'Doing something' with the auto sector pretty much meant following Obama's lead. As GM Canada is wholly owned by GM USA, whatever the Americans did our only option was to follow suit or say screw the whole thing. I blame the mess on Obama (who I previously thought highly of). He royally screwed the American public over and by extension the Canadians public as well. The Americans aren't exactly keen on keeping production in Canada and if we weren't going to meekly follow their lead we weren't going to have auto plants. Given the specifics of the deal, we should have given up on the auto plants. It's going to cost Ontario MORE in the long run than we'll ever recover and the rest of the country is even worse off with this deal. I'm so angry right now at Obama, Harper and McGuinty I don't even know what to say.

I understand what the gov't is trying to do 'in principle' but I think it's a waste of time. The dude has raised a family here and worked here for 12 years now and he's clearly not part of the KGB anymore. Kicking him out now because he was a sneakster 12 years ago isn't going to do anything but separate a family. He's not doing anything wrong now and it's extremely unlikely that you're going to set an example that's going to deter future spies from operating in Canada.

Yes I get it, you may be missing the point. We've thrown billions away that we'll never see again regardless. Now we're going to throw billions more away and will get pennies back for the dollar on that money. The real kicker in this deal is that Canada's not even able to HOLD the investment and wait for a return. We HAVE to sell it all to the private sector after 8 years and you can be damn sure that won't be long enough to recover even a fraction of that investment. We're investing $10B that we're not going to get anything back for so that we are in a marginally better position on our initial investment, which we aren't going to get much of anything back for anyways. ALL of our debt, as far as I understand, is being converted to equity, which we are required to sell off in 8 years, which won't be long enough to see if GM can turn things around. I'd love to see you work out the numbers that would show how the Canadian public are better off sinking $10B into over-generous CAW/UAW pensions than we would be liquidating the whole mess and taking a fire-sale return on what they already owe us. They've got a 1:2 debt-equity ratio so even if you firesaled it we'd at least get $0.25 to the dollar on what we've already sunk into it rather than investing another MASSIVE $10B and putting ourselves into a really shitty equity position that we'll only get a fraction back for anyways. This is a travesty of epic proportions as it relates to fairness in market economy.

A theoretically bad policy that ends up working out is nothing to cry about in my books. You're right that it was intended to be permanent, but that was before the economy pooped out. Having said that, the alternative was income tax reductions, which would have been equally bad for budget but would have helped us less in recession. However misguided the tax gst cut was, it worked out better than the Liberal solution. A plan to meet with the provinces to discuss a plan that they would come up with is not actually a plan. The infrastructure money is being spent, certainly, but that just gets back to the original point. Why are the Liberals criticizing Harper for a deficit that they would have incurred with their own policies? The best part, however, is they were also going to introduce an income redistribution tax (don't say the Green Shift wasn't) along with the infrastructure spending DURING a recession. To be honest, SmallC, I really think the Liberals and Conservatives measure up pretty equally as far as fiscal policy right now. Both advocated tax cuts, both advocated increased spending and both plunged us into deficit. Currently, I like the CPC flavour of incompetence better than the Liberal one, and I'm basing that pretty much solely on what I don't like about ideas like the Green Shift and EI reforms. Tomayto Tomahto for fiscal responsibility, but as far as misguided social engineering the Liberals look worse in my books.

The American governments (Bush and Obama both) are making things alot worse than they need to be.

I edited my post and took that out sorry. I think I understood finally at least what you were TRYING to say, although it still doesn't really make sense.

Seigniorage doesn't make the Canadian Banks agents of the government. The government can certainly influence them and the markets with monetary policy, but the Charterd Banks are still going to act in the best interest of their shareholders first.

Can you explain how the government borrows at 0.15%? I know they can borrow low but I didn't think it was that low.... Edit: Nevermind...I suppose you're talking Tbills. Dumb question.

So should the majority of our parliament (Harper, Ignatieff and Layton inclusive). Being the lucky suckers that we are, not only will we be paying taxes on this over the next two decades, we'll ALSO get to enjoy the benefits of higher mortgage and lending rates thanks to this. That's going to be an expensive principle to give up as far as the bond markets are concerned, and we're already seeing mortgage rates rising this week. The triple whammy of it, however, is that now we're in danger of having our credit ratings lowered as a result of the excessive government borrowing. Higher interest rates, here we come! I'm with you on that.

The GST cuts are better for during the recession. If they happened 10 months before that I really don't think it matters that much. There's no reason they have to be permanent either. Dion and the Liberals were the ones championing the fact that we were heading for recession. With that knowledge, they knew revenues would be way down. Knowing that, they knew there would be deficits and yet they still promised to increase spending and they continue to do so today. They're criticizing the Harper deficits, but then at the same time they're criticizing him for not doing enough to stimulate the economy. It's pure posturing and anyone with a brain can see it.

I think it's too complicated to say. I like to let the courts decide on a case by case basis. Sure, it may add to judicial backlogs, but I'd rather have them backlogged from keeping our politicians honest than I would with often useless appeals like it currently is.

Helping them restructure is one thing. Setting the precedent that secured bond holders are no longer first in line upon bankruptcy and that the union should get first dibs is another. This is political pandering that, in my opinion, equates to extreme political corruption. Obama is selling the country out to ensure he and the democrats maintain the good graces of Michigan, Indiana etc. Canada's getting a brutal deal as well. Like I said earlier, we're getting an equity stake in the new company, but we're being FORCED to divest it over 8 years. For us to make our money back, GM share prices need to go from $1 to $120ish. There's no chance in hell that we're to go even a third that far before we're forced to sell off. We're paying $10B to ensure that GM jobs stay here until 2016 (I think). After that there's no guarantees and there's once again ZERO chance that GM's contributions to our economy will equal a current valued $10B investment over the next decade. Obama and Harper had a chance here to make meaningful and fundamental changes to the way unions and corporations do business. Instead, they sold us out for a handful of jobs and votes and we're going to be paying off the difference for a long time. The best part is that the bankruptcy has tainted GM's image for a long time to come, and there's no guarantee that it will even survive AFTER the restructuring. GM's ads right now are PLEADING to people to keep buying their cars.

In a recession the only thing income tax cuts will do is make sure people have extra money to pay down their credit cards and debt. It's not likely to go to extra spending. A gst cut, on the other hand, doesn't help anyone who's not spending, and can only encourage (to however small a degree) consumerism. The spending increases were stupid leading up to the recession, the PBO is right in that. The problem is that if not the Conservatives, the Liberals would have spent the money themselves as well, as evidenced by their election promises and all of Ig's statements since then. The economists and PBO are certainly not endorsing their causes....

The CBC carries plenty of foreign programming. Commercial free radio is a pretty dubious proposition. I don't think Canadians are exactly going to die if there are commercials from time to time. Vast majority is pretty misleading. As I recall in March 50% of people polled supported its funding. Factor in standard deviation and that 50% can give a majority to either side. Strangely enough, most of the support for the CBC comes from the left. Actually that's not strange at all given the CBC ombudsman recently admitted a left bias. Is it surprising that left of centre voters support a state-sponsered left of centre media outlet? Not really. If you were taxed to support Harper friendly media, you'd likely be uspet too.

The sub-prime fiasco happened with a LOT of help from the government. It wasn't a purely private-sector mess up. I'm not saying everything should be privatized. I'm saying that on average, over the long term, it has proven throughout the world to be more efficient because (generally) it doesn't back losing causes.

I was reading the Globe today and found this little tidbit of information. Canada's stake in GM restructuring To summarize what I found pretty fishy is that Canadian governments are getting a 12.5% equity stake in the new GM in exchange for $10B in bailout money. For us to recover our 'investment' we'll probably need GM share prices to be as high as $120+ CAD (from other crap I've read). Part of the agreement, however, is that Canadian governments 'divest' their ownership of GM over set periods of time. After 3 years, we must sell 35% of our stake, 65% after 6 years, and the whole thing after 8. Now what do you people think the chances are we recover even half of what we're throwing away here? We'll never see that money again. The tax revenues from GM and parts suppliers will never make up the difference. This is so pathetic it hurts.

Yeah most Saturn models are based on Opel designs. They're still not the same brand though and I can't see Magna making a bid on Saturn. Saturns have a bad reputation regardless and I don't think Magna wants to get in on that mess unless they get a REAL firesale price.

Opel and Saturn are not the same brand. As I understand (correct me if I'm wrong) GM was planning to integrate the two brands by 2014. As far as I know they never did and Opel is not Saturn.

No there's not, else we would have seen it already when Martin was painting him as the bogey man.

I was merely responding to the other poster saying I was picking on CBC in a time when all stations are having problems breaking even. Like I said, CBC has always been unprofitable. It's always been unprofitable because it's always been unpopular. Check your logic on that one. If CBC was as popular as you say it is, it wouldn't be in the red every year. They earn revenue from advertising just like any station. I'm not saying people don't watch it. I'm arguing that it's questionable policy for the VAST AND OVERWHELMING majority of Canadians who don't watch the CBC to have to subsidize other people's entertainment.