Mark Blyth : Trumpism and Brexit

"The Hamptons is not a defensible position."

I'm trying to imagine a Canadian economist speaking this bluntly about austerity.

Mark Blyth, professor of Political Economy at Brown University, author of "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea" on Trumpism and Brexit
The above is an excerpt. Full 23 minute interview here.

h/t Antonia Zerbisias.
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The TPP - a casino where the house always wins

The best part of International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland signing the U.S. corporate rights agreement TPP - the Trans-Pacific Partnership - in Aukland NZ yesterday was that it was done here in this gambling casino, and a casino is where the house always wins.

In her 2012 book, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, Freeland explains :

"Trying to slant the rules of the game in your favour isn't an aberration, it is what all businesses seek to do. The difference isn't between having virtuous and villainous business people, it is about whether your society has the right rules and policing able to enforce them."

Of course this 'enforcement' would first entail our government not ditching those 'right rules' or 'policing' just because transnational corporations and their revolving-door crony capitalists within government find them inconvenient.

Justin Trudeau on the campaign trail, October 5 2015 :

“The Trans-Pacific Partnership stands to remove trade barriers, widely expand free trade for Canada, and increase opportunities for our middle class and those working hard to join it.... The government has an obligation to be open and honest about the negotiation process ..."

Then in mid-January Freeland told us :

“The negotiations are finished and for Canadians it’s important to understand that it’s a decision of yes or no..." 

All countries have two years to ratify it, but the treaty comes into force if the United States, Japan and four other countries give their approval.  

“It’s important for us to understand that we don’t have a veto.”

Yesterday she said : "There is a big difference between signing and ratifying", promising negotiations and parliamentary committees and round tables etc, all of which are very nice but none of which are legally binding on the Liberal caucus. 
Now that we've signed off on it however, we are all supposed to pin our hopes on those.


Flashback to the Liberal Convention of 2014 two years ago... 
Guest speaker and TPP advocate, former US Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers is interviewed on stage by Freeland, who introduces him as "a dear friend, teacher, and probably the smartest person I know". Summers, she explains, is there to give the Libs "some great ideas about how to transform Canada and in so doing transform the world." 

Now most of us probably remember Larry Summers as the US bank deregulator - a prominent architect alongside Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin in reversing the 1933 US Glass-Steagall Act, that Depression-era legislation which prevented US banks from turning into the high-risk hedge-fund casinos making wild bets against their own depositors' money they became in the late 2000's. Or we remember him as the $5M hedge fund advisor who made millions in speaking fees from the hedge funds he later helped regulate while advocating tax cuts and no ceiling on CEO pay for stimulus recipients. Or as a Bilderberg Group Steering Committee member.

Whatev.

What I wish is that rather than continue to parrot all that "all middle-class liberals together" shmooze that Summers was selling the Libs two years ago, including airily blowing off the casino bank crisis he helped precipitate, better the Liberals should instead try out what Summers, still a strident TPP advocate, is saying now : 

"First, the era of agreements that achieve freer trade in the classic sense is essentially over. The world’s remaining tariff and quota barriers are small and, where present, less reflections of the triumph of protectionist interests and more a result of deep cultural values. 

What we call trade agreements are in fact agreements on the protection of investments and the achievement of regulatory harmonization...

Concerns that trade agreements may be a means to circumvent traditional procedures for taking up issues ranging from immigration to financial regulation must be taken seriously.

Being pressed down everywhere are middle classes who lack the wherewithal to take advantage of new global markets and do not want to compete with low-cost foreign labor. Our challenge now is less to increase globalization than to make the globalization we have work for our citizens."

Try to keep up with your own hero's rhetoric here, Libs. 



Economix Comix : The TransPacific Partnership and "Free Trade"

Robert Reich takes on the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2 minutes 26 seconds

Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz heaps scorn on TPP and TTIP

Paul Krugman on the TPP

Michael Geist : The Trouble with the TPP, Day 1: U.S. Blocks Balancing Objectives   Start here but Geist is up to Day 25 now ....

Press Progress : Bernie Sanders: 
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a "disastrous" deal for the middle-class.

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"What is Plan B?"

asked Armine Yalnizyan of Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on CBC's The Current this morning. "What if your plan is not oil?" 

I'll get back to Yalnizyan's Plan B in a moment, but preceding her on the program was TD Bank VP and chief economist Craig Alexander. He spoke to that Bank of Canada survey of 100 executives that came out this week, 62% of whom called for diversification to reduce Canada's dependence on the energy sector as oil prices collapse.

"Energy plus metals and minerals mining amounts to less than 10% of Canadian economy but 25% of the entire Albertan economy," he said, where loss of oil jobs and stagnant wages will also affect retail spending despite a projected $900 saving per family per year at the pumps. So no growth for Alberta and Saskatchewan this year and under a 3% increase for BC and Ontario.  

Two and a half years ago and before the collapse of oil prices, he was calling for investing in childcare and early education in his TD report :
“It is very much an economic topic,” said Alexander. "If you are concerned with skills development, productivity and innovation, you should really care about this subject."

"For every dollar invested, the return ranges from roughly $1.50 to almost $3. For disadvantaged children, the return runs into the double digits ...  it follows that more focus should be put on investing in, and improving the system,” the report says." But later, when we can afford it.


CCPA's Yalnizyan says that time is now :

"In our global economy we need our best and brightest to be our best and brightest. We can ill afford to discount Canadians who cannot afford to upgrade their skills at any point in their lives, not just when they're getting out of high school." 

We are part of global economy in which Canada has fallen from 8th to 11th place while current government policy is directed at "ripping and stripping our natural resources," she said, despite those collapsing oil prices and the coming expense of population aging.

Plan B? Mission-oriented public policy is required, she said, because without it we will just get higher healthcare costs without necessarily any improvement.
Taking your hands off the wheel won't necessarily deliver what we need so how can we make life cheaper for the people who, unlike our corporate hoarders, spend every dollar they earn in the economy? 

"The global economy is transitioning and pivoting away from fossil fuels to renewables and we should be contributing to this fight to find the most energy-efficient ways of using and generating energy .

Focus on healthcare costs in a different way. Spend on social determinants. What causes all round good health?  Better housing, public transportation, education, even income redistribution. Population health-based intervention. 

While 10% of the economy is in the energy sector, 11% of our economy is in the health sector. Use that engine of the economy to improve peoples' lives and get a better bang for the buck.

We spent $14-billion on dental care for children in Saskatchewan and Manitoba in late 70s and early 80s. The mouth is the only part of healthcare that isn't covered."

$14B sounds like a lot to have spent on childrens' health until you consider that the government already spends $13B a year in taxpayer-funded subsidies to oil and gas industries. 

The program wrapped up with Stephen Gordon, economist at LaValle University. 
Shorter and presumably not ironic Gordon : "Oil is our precious. Why can't we just leave the markets a-l-o-o-o-o-o-n-e?"
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RNN : Canada's "Patriot Act" as a political ploy.

The Real News Network is doing a weekly panel discussion on Canadian issues and it's refreshingly less middling than the media panels we have become accustomed to. 
In today's panel, Leo Panitch and Dimitri Lascaris take on Bill C-51, the tanking tarsands, and the political positioning of the Libs, Cons, and NDP going into the next election. 

Please click through to RNN at the link to show your support for a vid I've only pillaged from their site. 
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It's still class warfare

The European Monetary Union was born of countries pegging their exchange rate to Germany's so all countries would have the same inflation rate of 2 %. The EMU gave those countries a formal voice.

The plan was to have each European country’s wages rise in line with their own productivity plus 2%, ie living according to your means – not above it, not below it.

Just before the euro was implemented, Germany cut wages to bring down unemployment, deviating downward from the agreed-upon 2%, resulting in the beggaring of all its neighbours by making German products cheaper and wiping out its EMU partners' exports.

German economist Dr. Heiner Flassbeck: 

“The big battle that we have in this world is not between Germany and the other Europeans, is not between south and north, China and so on. The big battle is still, believe it or not, between labour and capital. This is still the big battle. I know it’s fashionable in the US to a priori dismiss such arguments by calling them class warfare arguments – Republicans like this very much to say “This is class warfare”. 

 I’ll tell you what happens in this world is class warfare. Look at the US. What happens in the US right now? For the first time in modern history since WW2, we are two years into a recovery and nominal wages are rising by absolutely zero - they’re not rising at all. For the first time we have not only a jobless recovery - that’s a normal thing – for the first time in the US we have a wageless recovery. Wageless recovery. And that is exactly what Germany did 15 years ago – wageless recovery – and I can tell you how this experiment is going to end because in the US there is no market that they can occupy, no partners that they can exploit, there is no currency union that they can use - the experiment will end in disaster. It will end in disaster because if you do not have a regime that allows the systematic participation of workers in the productivity increase – and this is what the people are talking about when they talk about the 99% but it is worse now than 10 years ago, worse than ever  -  then capitalism hits the wall because no economy can grow successfully if their people only have to rely on bubbles, that sooner or later burst, to consume, and if they cannot expect that they will participate in the success of all.”

Via The Real News Network


Iceland arrested the former CEO of one of its three failed banks, along with a broker and market director. Here in North America we arrest people for protesting the banks instead.

Bruce Campbell, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives : Rising Inequality, Declining Democracy
on how this works in Canada.

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Why the Canada-EU free trade deal is a bad deal for Canada.

Economist Jim Stanford deftly savages the economic model behind Steve's promotion of the Canada-EU free trade agreement.
A $12-billion gain in our GDP? Would you like to see my pet unicorn later?

His original lecture "Out of Equilibrium" appeared here. Too long for either Blogger or Youtube, I've merely split it into two parts.
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Long John Flaherty's Talk Like a Prat Day

Long John Jim Flaherty's speech to the Canadian Club last week might well read like he was running for student council at Garden Gnome High, but at least he has finally nailed down that whole four legs good, two legs bad, one peg leg argument about coalitions :

In the global recession, the ship of state has had a difficult voyage.
But we can see the harbour lights.
And that’s just when a would-be captain and his ragtag crew are trying to storm the bridge.
If they seize the wheel, ladies and gentlemen, they’ll have us on the rocks.

Oh noes, pirate parties!

Flaherty, the Finance Minister of Canada, managed to fit the word 'coalition' 13 times into a speech in which the word 'economy' rated a mere 8. So are we in election mode? Fuck, no :

"The coalition led by Mr. Ignatieff has its own agenda – power, power, power.
Under an Ignatieff-NDP-Bloc Québécois government, nothing would be safe."

Sorry, wrong clip ... I scrolled too far ahead... ah, here we go :

"...there is, I regret to say, a political risk.
That is the risk of an unnecessary election, an election that would jeopardize our economic recovery, just as we enter the home stretch.
Canadians don’t want an election. Our government isn’t seeking one.
Ladies and gentlemen, an unnecessary election would put all of this at risk."

"Unnecessary election"?
Weren't you the same guys who already gave us an "unnecessary election" in 2008 because you had no freakin clue how to work with the other parties and you were hoping for a majority which would mean you wouldn't have to?

Canadians are tired of political instability.
They are tired of elections every two years.

Yeah, got it. You've said that twice now

And they know we need a stable government, to ensure our economic recovery and long-term growth.
There is going to be an election, sooner or later.
The coalition may make it sooner.
Regardless, when it comes, Canadians will face a stark choice.
The outcome will be a majority government, one way or another.
A stable, national majority under Stephen Harper’s leadership.
Or the reckless coalition of Michael Ignatieff, the NDP, and the Bloc Québécois.

Ok, forget the pirate thing. We've apparently metaphored into stables now. Stygian stables of steaming floor to ceiling horseshit.
"A stable national majority" under Steve the Unsteady?
The guy who rolls out of bed in the morning, spins the agenda wheel, and decides to axe anything with the word 'long' in it? Long form census one day; long gun registry the next.
Steve the Economist who pissed away a $13-billion dollar surplus in favour of a $40-billion deficit, who has the fucking gall to go on about our fragile economy while blowing $1.2 billion on summit security, and who padlocked the doors of Parliament twice in thirteen months rather than deal with living in a stable democracy.

You're not getting your Stygian stable majority, Steve, because even in a minority government you behave ridiculously like Darth Vader in the Deathstar cantine ordering up prorogies when you don't get your way.
You should have learned this from your last "unnecessary election".
Stability will only come from you learning to work nicely with the other elected , uh, pirates.
And that's why we keep giving them, not you, a stable majority of Canadian votes.
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Speech from the Throne 2010 - "Now and For the Future Markets"

Today's Throne Speech is already leaking on the parquet, hours ahead of schedule.

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We may have 1.5 million unemployed with a third of those jobs not coming back, but no worries because Steve has a plan :

We're going to import more immigrant workers from overseas.

and

Throne speech to allow increased foreign investment

"The Conservative government will use the throne speech and budget to allow for more foreign investment in Canada and fewer bureaucratic hurdles to business, a senior government official said Tuesday. It's also expected to include policies aimed at reducing the regulatory burden, luring foreign investors, relaxing foreign ownership restrictions, and recruiting foreign talent.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his cabinet believe Canadian business has relied on a low dollar over the past 20 years to compete internationally rather than investing in equipment and technology needed to become more productive."

What Steve and his cabinet actually believe is that it is government's job to promote private sector business so that a combination of its creativity and profits will trickle down to solve all our social and economic problems, relieving him of those responsibilities. Unfortunately the private sector's job is to be responsible solely to its stockholders. How's that working out for us so far?

Progressive Economics :

"Private sector non-residential capital investment is only expected to increase by 2.8% in 2010. This is despite expectations of an increase in pre-tax corporate profits of 15% this year and 16.5% next year, according to RBC’s latest forecast .

After tax corporate profits are set to rise even faster, with Harper and Flaherty’s corporate tax cuts giving up $8.6 billion in revenues this year, rising to almost $15 billion in 2013/14."

"Sometimes you have to walk and chew gum at the same time in this business," Mr. Harper told reporters in Vancouver. When what we really need here is a different brand of gum and a whole other way of walking.

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Presumably the speech will also feature gloating and families and security and homilies and hand-outs that will last till the next election.

Be sure to wash your hands and put the seat back down on your way out.

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The miracle of Goldman Sachs

The G&M notes the "miraculous recovery" of Goldman Sachs, "expected to report Tuesday that it made a profit of more than $2-billion US in the March to June period – possibly its best quarter in two years."

It's a freakin' miracle alright - just like the miracle of the cups and ball trick.

Or, as Matt Taibbi writes in Goldman Sachs : The Great American Bubble Machine, helpfully posted up at Statism Watch , it's like "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money... If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain."

Matt Taibbi does the trick with the transparent cups :

The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest.

And why should you care? Well "the heads of the Canadian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York - which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman ..."

Penn and Teller, well, Penn, explains that one of the secrets of magic is to never repeat a trick for the same audience, but Taibbi tells us "Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they’re about to do it again." Good article.

Fun fact : Goldman Sachs' corporate tax rate in 2008 : 1%
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Iggy and Steve - Fiscal Conservatism

The deficit will be twice what the Cons projected?

With fearless Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page pointing out the Cons' crappy math skills once again, we recall their ongoing threats to sell off crown corporations to offset the federal deficit and compare them with these words from Defence Minister Peter MacKay in May :

"The global economic downturn won't prevent the Canadian Forces from spending $60 billion on new equipment."

Will we be getting social services cuts to go with that?

Well as Harper pointed out to us in October last year, an economic meltdown does provide for lots of excellent investment opportunities - in fiscal conservatism.

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Danger! Bankers at work!

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h/t Brasscheck TV

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Chomsky : Understanding the Crisis

A fascinating interview with Noam Chomsky at Foreign Policy in Focus.

On the people who are now designing Obama's economic policies :

"Dean Baker, one of the few economists who saw what was coming all along, pointed out that it's almost like appointing Osama bin Laden to run the so-called war on terror.
Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, Clinton's treasury secretaries, are among the main architects of the crisis. Summers intervened strongly to prevent any regulation of derivatives and other exotic instruments. Rubin, who preceded him, was right in the lead of undermining the Glass-Steagall act, all of which is pretty ironic. The Glass-Steagall Act protected commercial banks from risky investment firms, insurance firms, and so on, which kind of protected the core of the economy. That was broken up in 1999 largely under Rubin's influence. He immediately left the treasury department and became a director of Citigroup, which benefited from the breakdown of Glass-Steagall by expanding and becoming a "financial supermarket" as they called it. Just to increase the irony (or the tragedy if you like) Citigroup is now getting huge taxpayer subsidies to try to keep it together and just in the last few weeks announced that it's breaking up. It's going back to trying to protect its commercial banking from risky side investments. Rubin resigned in disgrace — he's largely responsible for this. But he's one of Obama's major economic advisors, Summers is another one; Summer's protégé Tim Geithner is the Treasury Secretary."

Privatizing Hydro-Québec

Hydro-Québec is a crown corporation and the largest producer of hydro-electric power in the world. Worth $130B, its revenue in 2007 was over $12B, of which $2B went as a dividend to Quebec City. It provides Québec with the world's cheapest hydro rates.

The Montreal Economic Institute is a neoliberal think tank devoted to disbanding the wheat board and privatizing water, healthcare, and now apparently Hydro-Québec.


Yesterday the MEI released its report plumping for the privatization of Hydro-Québec.
Author Claude Garcia explained that while privatization would mean higher rates for Quebec consumers, they would gain the advantage of choosing their service provider and could be given shares in the new company. And why not sell power at 9.6 cents per kilowatt-hour to energy-thirsty consumers in Boston or New York, rather than at the current rate of 3 cents charged to Quebec's aluminum smelters?

Here's how that report was dutifully replayed in the media yesterday :

G&M : Report calls for sale of Hydro- Québec
"Hydro-Québec is racked by wretched inefficiency and would be better off to Quebec being privatized according to a new study commissioned by the Montreal Economic Institute."

CTV : Hydro-Quebec would be more effective if privatized, study finds
"A new study suggests Hydro-Quebec is racked by inefficiency and would be more valuable to the province if it were privatized."

CJAD : Sell off Hydro-Quebec, make an extra 10 billion a year. .
Bloomberg : Quebec Should Sell Hydro-Quebec, Globe Says, Citing Study .
Trading Markets : Privatizing Hydro-Québec would give $10 billion more a year to Quebecers .
Montreal Gazette : Our cheap power comes at a price .

OK, help me out here. If selling excess energy to the US is the goal, why not do it while retaining Hydro-Québec as a crown corporation for the longterm benefit of Quebec?
Could someone please explain that to me?
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Flaperty's little fixer-upper

Thus far the only party that hasn't made up its mind about Steve's budget is the Libs - all the others hate it.
Will Iggy pass it to avoid an election? No one wants an election - the Libs are too broke and the Harpercon base are too furious with him for his "liberal" budget to show up.

So what's your vote worth to Steve?
They propose to add a $6 billion stimulus package to the $13 billion deficit they had already racked up so far and which they presumably wished to hide within this economic crisis package. We will all get $199 to $599 each, unless you're really poor in which case you'll only get $33. If you're on a fixed low income, you get nothing.

Six out of 10 Canadians pay into EI but still won't be eligible to receive it - no change there.

If you can afford to spend up to $10,000 on a home reno, you'll get a 15% tax credit on it next year if you get it done by Feb 2010. Renters - bupkiss.

Personal income tax exemption will go up from the $10,100 already scheduled for 2009 to $10,320. That's 2.2%.

Every dollar the feds put into infrastructure will be contingent on the provinces and municipalities ponying up 73 cents to match it - although Flaperty says they'll be able to get around this and Iggy is going to challenge it.

Did I mention banks will get at least $200 billion with no upper dollar limit? Plus that $4.4 billion in cuts to business taxes?

Here's the real story.
The whole purpose of tax cuts is to reduce the size and role of government in the long term. Less childcare, education, health and social security; more P3s and deregulation.
So for all the flap about the Cons throwing money around, this is still ultimately a neocon ReformaTory budget.
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Budget 2009 : Open door policy!

Via Maxwell's House, we learn that Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finangling, has thrown open the doors to all Canadians to contribute to Budget 2009 at the ministry website! Really. What's your pleasure?
Sure there's a handy list of suggestions but also a page to write in your own.

Sven at Fish Eggs has an idea :

"Every Canadian Citizen, will, for the next twelve months, receive a $2000 monthly payment. If you make more than $35,000 per year, it will be progressively taxed to ensure it gets to those whom need it the most. Simple.

This programme will run for one year only. Short.

As the lower income earners all know, this money would enter the economy almost completely, as there is little or no room for most to squirrel away their money. People could spend this money to buy a car, thus bailing out the auto industry. Or they could choose to spend it on housing, thus bailing out the housing industry. Or they may decide to invest in more education and go back to school, thus bailing out the education sector. What matters here is that the PEOPLE would decide where to put OUR hard earned tax dollars. The politicians would then be able to see where we chose to put our money and they could then craft legislation to reflect these investment choices made by Canadians. Effective."

Go for it, Sven.

Canada to rescue U.S. banks?

When Stephen Harper suggested on Tuesday that the market sell-off would present an excellent buying opportunity for investors, is this what he was referring to?

Fin. Post : Fed trolls Canada to rescue U.S. banks
"In a desperate bid to help U.S. banks recapitalize, Washington is dropping its inhibitions and reaching out to Canadian financial institutions to gauge their willingness to participate in rescue operations.
The Federal Reserve has activated a back channel that puts the central bank in direct contact with chief executives at Canada's largest banks and insurers, according to a person familiar with the dialogue.
They are approaching "banks with major assets in the U.S. like [Toronto-Dominion Bank] and Royal [Bank of Canada]"
A lobbyist for a Canadian bank said the political climate in Washington had changed markedly since the passage of a $700-billion bailout and that this country is now seen as a potential source of support.
It was not clear how deeply involved Canadian authorities were in the discussions."

G-7 finance ministers are due to meet in Washington this weekend.

In its June 2008 report, Compete to Win, the federal government’s Competition Review Panel recommended scrapping the ban on bank mergers and "harmonizing its expectations with those of the U.S."

h/t Anon in comments

And now, a couple of words from The Economist

h/t Netzkobald.com

Carrying water for elephants

The elephant in the room of this election has been the US market meltdown courtesy of the Republican elephant.

Yesterday Steve took time out from pretending to ignore it altogether to express his concern that we might not let him carry water for Uncle Miltie's neo-liberal fantasy economics any more :

"In a time of economic uncertainty, I do think the country needs a strong government that's able to govern," Mr. Harper told journalists in Toronto. "My concern is that obviously, going forward, that we have a government that's going to be sabotaged by a bunch of parties who don't want our economy to be successful."

Yeah, that's it, Steve, you prat. They just want to sabotage Canada.

Speaking of sabotage, Steve, as an economist PM, you have implemented de-regulation of food and airline safety and the abandonment of independent Canadian regulation and testing of pesticides and drugs. In fact your singular economic achievement since taking office has been to turn the $13B surplus you inherited from PM Martin into $60B in corporate tax cuts.

Decent short article on economic cycles : Teetering between Keynes and Friedman :

"When the pyramid starts crumbling, taxpayers must step in to refinance the banking system, revive mortgage markets and prevent economic collapse."

I'm guessing a surplus would be more useful here than a pledge to continue carrying water for Uncle Miltie's Republican elephant.

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Cue the hilarious How the markets really work one more time.

Image from Banksy

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Bear Naked Stearns

Bear Stearns is the second largest underwriter of mortgage-backed securities after Lehman Bros.

James E Cayne, CEO of Bear Stearns, made $38.31M last year.
He retired in January.
His retirement package was estimated in late February to be worth $560M...
although it's probably worth somewhat less now since Bear Stearns was bought out by the Federal Reserve Bank and JP Morgan this weekend to prevent it from going into bankruptcy.

I ran this in January but here it is, now even more hideously relevant, again :
How the markets really work

"An unemployed black man sitting on a crumbling porch somewhere in Alabama in his string vest" is one of over 2 million people in the US who had their mortgages foreclosed last year.

So how 'special' are we?

Harper to tell G8 Canada 'special' on climate change.


Click to enlarge.
The above graphic shows the relationship between wealth and energy consumption, plotting per capita energy consumption (x axis) against per capita income (y axis) for all countries with more than 20 million inhabitants in 2006.
Canada is indeed special. With the highest energy consumption per person in the world, we still fall behind Japan, the US and the UK in our ability to translate that consumption into wealth, while Germany and France require roughly half our energy consumption to maintain the same GDP as us.

The red dot represents the world average, with China and India falling well below it in both energy consumption and income.
I would remind those who prefer whole country stats over the social justice issues exposed in per capita stats that the environment doesn't much care about country names and boundaries.
Just sayin', Steve.

Image courtesy of Frank van Mierlo