Full Steam Ahead on Political Blathering

We're in the throes of political accusations, character assassinations, the full blame game, culminating in vote-for-me. The prognostications for the country's future are bandied about by self-serving political parties and their leaders; success can only be ensured by the wholesale acceptance of the promising party's platform, rife with a splendorous scattering of tax dollars to pet projects.

The single largest issue that has voters' attention is the economy. Not quite faltering, not quite yet, despite the drama taking place south of our border, with American financial institutions tailspinning into bankruptcy, and their economy staggering under the weight of a horrendously costly, unwinnable war, along with the fallout of greed and corruption of their corporate heads making lending decisions based solely on the rate of return.

"A re-elected Conservative government will make prudent investments to help the southwestern Ontario economy grow", promised the prime minister. Spare the details, offer the global picture and paint it rosy. Ontario is the sole province whose performance has been less than sterling. "There are and will be difficulties in the world economy", he declared. "At the same time, Canada is not in the same situation as the United States.

"Our household sector, our government sector, and our financial institutions have solid economic fundamentals", and he's right there. Canada has always had a banking culture unlike that of the U.S. with their multifarious independent banks. Our top banks are in the position of coddling healthy balance sheets; with little bad-money investments in U.S. debt instruments.

It helps considerably that under Canadian law no foreign individual or institution can buy up greater a greater than 10% interest in any major Canadian bank, unless the minister of finance acquiesces. And under the Free Trade negotiations the very idea of making our national institutions vulnerable to aggressive buy-ins by U.S. financial institutions was wisely nixed.

But that didn't stop Stephane Dion from moaning that Canada now has the worse economy in the G8; a reversal in recent fortunes when Canada was in the top position. Our labour productivity has gone into decline, as our export opportunities plummeted in tandem with a higher dollar value, making our products more expensive - particularly for our largest trading partner, new bereft of pocket change.

On the positive side, however, there was a considerable uptick in commodities pricing and Canada has those items, lots of them for sale on the world market, thank you very much for noticing. High commodity prices have buoyed the Canadian economy. Yet, warns Elizabeth May of the Green party, "Mr. Harper's fiscal policies have already severely undermined the strength and resilience of Canada's economic fundamentals".

Don't think so, not really. As part of the global economy, Canada is simply reacting, relatively mildly to date, to the international financial show-down affecting all countries in an increasingly co-dependent world of financial markets.