We have a big treat in store for us tonight and tomorrow as we watch the opposition parties in Canada talk out of two sides of their mouths at the same time. When last we visited this soap opera, you may remember that the 3 opposition parties in our parliamentary system made a desperate grab for power by threatening to outvote the governing party on a financial bill. This forced the Conservatives to backpedal from a clearly arrogant and ill-timed attempt to pull all of the government financing from each of the parties, including themselves. Nothing is so angry as a politician forced from the taxpayer's teat.
So here we are, the economy world-wide is in turmoil, the Americans are printing money faster than "you-know-what" through a goose, companies everywhere are clamouring for bailouts regardless of their ability to be successful, banks around the world who have been injected with taxpayer's money refuse to lend any of it, layoffs are reaching levels never experienced by this generation and the Canadian government is about to create a 35 billion dollar deficit in this budget (that's 1,000.00 for every man, woman and child in the country) and will be applauded by the pundits for plunging us into another round of debt.
A couple of months ago, the opposition was screaming for just this scenario but what would you like to bet that they will spend all of their time blaming the governing party for doing what they themselves would have done, only more so? It seems that in our system, the opposition wants only to oppose, regardless of their own counsel and in complete opposition to their stated beliefs of a few short weeks prior. It will be interesting to see at least two of the opposition leaders hold forth with views of how the government is completely mismanaging the economy without having read (would they understand it if they did?) the budget that is presented.
Let's hope against hope that some common sense, civility and intelligence rises from the steaming pile of stench that we call Ottawa. Not that I'm cynical......
Hey Bob,
ReplyDeleteI have a positive spin about the politicians dumping all this money into the economy as part of the stimulus package. At least as far as the banks go in Canada.
It appears they aren't following the American plan of buying up the bad loans and letting the banks profit from the good loans.In Canada they are buying the prime insured loans from the banks to inject capital back into the banks and leaving the banks to worry about the bad loans they made.
It's actually a good plan, who would have thought it came from government!