Πηγή: The Coming Depression
2/9/2011
“Negative growth in the April to June period is the first time the economy has shrunk in two years. Combined with recent stock market turmoil, stalling economic growth in the U.S., and continuing debt worries in Europe, it raises the spectre of the country sliding back into recession. “
But federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, along with economists, say unless consumer spending or the housing market drop off sharply in coming months, a return to recession is unlikely.
Flaherty said that he expects modest growth in the second half of this year.
A recession is typically defined as two consecutive quarters of economic decline.
“The good news in (the) data release is that our domestic economy remains strong, with consumption, and particularly business investment, continuing to expand,” Flaherty said Wednesday.
He made the comments while touring a 14,000-square-foot expansion of the Ryerson University School of Image Arts, paid for by the federal and provincial governments.
Canada’s gross domestic product, or GDP, contracted at an annualized rate of 0.4 per cent for the three months ended June 30, according to Statistics Canada.
“It wasn’t a huge surprise. We were expecting that the Canadian economy did stall in the second quarter with a high risk of a contraction,” said Diana Petramala, an economist with TD Economics.
While the higher Canadian dollar has contributed to slower exports, the second quarter’s decline was mostly a result of temporary factors, economists say. Source: (1) The Star
Negative growth is supposed to sound good?
Whomever coined the phrase “negative growth”: Is that supposed to make it sound good? Its kind of like having a “positive deficit”. We win on both counts!
Of course Canada will go negative. All they do is export raw materials and if other countries aren’t manufacturing using those then they have a problem. We’re not sure who is the bigger problem – their Con jobs in Ottawa or our business leaders for not investing, not innovating, not training.
Once positive growth starts somewhere else our raw materials will flow again BUT what will happen with our manufactured goods. To our knowledge value added business still has not adjusted to the new currency level and pretty soon they will hear their cries again.
“It would have to be … the oxymoronic word ‘negative growth,’” he replied, in an interview with CBC’s The House. “But we’re looking at the year. I don’t look at just the quarters … as long as the growth overall is the modest moderate growth we expect and some small growth in the United States, then in North America we will be relatively well-off.”
If Canada wants a real economy, complete with jobs, they need government leadership to foster those industries that can compete and some courage and innovation on the part of our business leaders to try and compete. That means no across the board tax cuts for companies but big credits for those innovating, investing, hiring and training.
The one thing you can bank on – until people get jobs (actually producing something- not just serving coffee) and feel secure our growth will be “negative”
Let’s review recent history:
1. In early ’02, Paul O’Neill, the US Treasury Sec., warned W. that if the GOP went ahead w/ more tax cuts, the result would be deficits >$500B (see the CBS News interview from Jan./04 w/ O’Neill for more info.). Did Bush Jr. listen to his sage counsel? No. He listened to his ‘brain’, Karl Rove, who told the prez.: “Stick to principle. Stick to principle. Don’t waver.” What ‘principle’? The one voiced by ‘Darth’ Cheney to O’Neill: “You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.”
2. During Dubya’s two disastrous terms, the U.S. federal debt increased by nearly $4.9T. During his last 12 months alone it exceeded $1.4T.
3. In ’06 & early ’07, economists & financial experts such as Drs. Nouriel Roubini & Martin Weiss & Bill Gross (mgr. of the world’s largest bond fund) as well as others warned that the massive U.S. subprime ‘bubble’ would soon burst & wipe out trillions of $ in global wealth & millions of jobs. Deregulation of the financial industry, one of the GOP’s ‘sacred cows’, made it possible for U.S. financial institutions to loan up to 100% of a home’s selling price to low-income people & those w/ poor credit history, few or no assets, one P/T job, etc. Full-throttle corporate greed expanded the ‘bubble’ enormously.
4. The Harper Cons. did NOTHING to protect Ottawa’s revenues from the PREDICTED U.S. subprime ‘tsunami’, i.e., the Cons. FAILED to implement a hedging strategy to maintain revenues even as millions of jobs (in the U.S. & Canada alone) were lost & EI claims mushroomed & industries (e.g., auto sector) begged for federal dollars for help.
We warned Harper & Flaherty 17 months ago to get the govt ready for the INESCAPABLE fallout from the coming U.S. economic decline & provided reports & references. Again, they’ve FAILED!
Trudeau left Parliament in 1984 leaving a 200 Billion Debt. Mulroney left in 1994 leaving a 540+ Billion Debt with a massive (for those days) 40 Billion Deficit. Canada’s past prime ministers Chretien and Martin, apparently the only REAL stewards of the Canadian Economy, left a massive surplus and a 450 Billion debt (roughly) from their efforts on debt reduction and job creation.
Following Republican/Conservative “Voodoo Economics” (Bush 41 called it right before becoming a coward and retracting it) Canada has wiped out their efforts over the last decade in obtaining REAL freedom over a long haul (National Economic Autonomy)
The decade of Conservativism that started in 2000 with the Bush 43 administration has been a complete waste of time, money and effort…..
We can only wonder how bad it will be in 4 years time from now, since there hasn’t been any Conservative Prime Minister that left a smaller or equal national deficit and debt going all the way back to John A MacDonald in the 1800s.
This government has been living in another world where the sky is some colour other than blue.
Their Finance Minister Flaherty has been telling us for years that the Cdn economy is in great shape, even though it is 80%… or more… dependent on the US Economy to sustain the exports that are fundamental to Canada’s prosperity. The US economy has not responded to mis-used stimulous money, and it has not shown ANY signs of imminent recovery since BEFORE the collapse in 2008 (three years ago). The inevitable outcome of this circumstance is a decline in Canadian economic growth, an inevitability that everyone but Stevie and the Finance Minister seems to have noticed.
(Now, here’s where we get repetitive.) The tragedy in this story is that this outcome was highly predictable with just a basic economics background in the years leading up to the 2008 collapse. Finance Minister Martin even allowed for it in his budgets well before Stevie and his Finance Minister arrived. In spite of this, Stevie and the Finance Minister have been slashing revenue to the treasury and spending like drunken sailors on programs of no strategic value to this country’s future. They have shattered R&D spending, which reveals a contempt for the future and foretells of future slashes to strategic investing in Canada, including allowing our medical system to atrophy. (Stevie was the president of the National Citizens’ Coalition, a group started up by an insurance industry mavin with the intention of killing the Canada Health Act.)
Couple these signs of incompetence to their past record of misconduct, disregard for reality and the average voter, and you can see they are taking us down a path towards a US Style system in which the average citizen is in second place to corporate ownership of the political system. This is WRONG!
But federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, along with economists, say unless consumer spending or the housing market drop off sharply in coming months, a return to recession is unlikely.
Flaherty said that he expects modest growth in the second half of this year.
A recession is typically defined as two consecutive quarters of economic decline.
“The good news in (the) data release is that our domestic economy remains strong, with consumption, and particularly business investment, continuing to expand,” Flaherty said Wednesday.
He made the comments while touring a 14,000-square-foot expansion of the Ryerson University School of Image Arts, paid for by the federal and provincial governments.
Canada’s gross domestic product, or GDP, contracted at an annualized rate of 0.4 per cent for the three months ended June 30, according to Statistics Canada.
“It wasn’t a huge surprise. We were expecting that the Canadian economy did stall in the second quarter with a high risk of a contraction,” said Diana Petramala, an economist with TD Economics.
While the higher Canadian dollar has contributed to slower exports, the second quarter’s decline was mostly a result of temporary factors, economists say. Source: (1) The Star
Negative growth is supposed to sound good?
Whomever coined the phrase “negative growth”: Is that supposed to make it sound good? Its kind of like having a “positive deficit”. We win on both counts!
Of course Canada will go negative. All they do is export raw materials and if other countries aren’t manufacturing using those then they have a problem. We’re not sure who is the bigger problem – their Con jobs in Ottawa or our business leaders for not investing, not innovating, not training.
Once positive growth starts somewhere else our raw materials will flow again BUT what will happen with our manufactured goods. To our knowledge value added business still has not adjusted to the new currency level and pretty soon they will hear their cries again.
“It would have to be … the oxymoronic word ‘negative growth,’” he replied, in an interview with CBC’s The House. “But we’re looking at the year. I don’t look at just the quarters … as long as the growth overall is the modest moderate growth we expect and some small growth in the United States, then in North America we will be relatively well-off.”
If Canada wants a real economy, complete with jobs, they need government leadership to foster those industries that can compete and some courage and innovation on the part of our business leaders to try and compete. That means no across the board tax cuts for companies but big credits for those innovating, investing, hiring and training.
The one thing you can bank on – until people get jobs (actually producing something- not just serving coffee) and feel secure our growth will be “negative”
Let’s review recent history:
1. In early ’02, Paul O’Neill, the US Treasury Sec., warned W. that if the GOP went ahead w/ more tax cuts, the result would be deficits >$500B (see the CBS News interview from Jan./04 w/ O’Neill for more info.). Did Bush Jr. listen to his sage counsel? No. He listened to his ‘brain’, Karl Rove, who told the prez.: “Stick to principle. Stick to principle. Don’t waver.” What ‘principle’? The one voiced by ‘Darth’ Cheney to O’Neill: “You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.”
2. During Dubya’s two disastrous terms, the U.S. federal debt increased by nearly $4.9T. During his last 12 months alone it exceeded $1.4T.
3. In ’06 & early ’07, economists & financial experts such as Drs. Nouriel Roubini & Martin Weiss & Bill Gross (mgr. of the world’s largest bond fund) as well as others warned that the massive U.S. subprime ‘bubble’ would soon burst & wipe out trillions of $ in global wealth & millions of jobs. Deregulation of the financial industry, one of the GOP’s ‘sacred cows’, made it possible for U.S. financial institutions to loan up to 100% of a home’s selling price to low-income people & those w/ poor credit history, few or no assets, one P/T job, etc. Full-throttle corporate greed expanded the ‘bubble’ enormously.
4. The Harper Cons. did NOTHING to protect Ottawa’s revenues from the PREDICTED U.S. subprime ‘tsunami’, i.e., the Cons. FAILED to implement a hedging strategy to maintain revenues even as millions of jobs (in the U.S. & Canada alone) were lost & EI claims mushroomed & industries (e.g., auto sector) begged for federal dollars for help.
We warned Harper & Flaherty 17 months ago to get the govt ready for the INESCAPABLE fallout from the coming U.S. economic decline & provided reports & references. Again, they’ve FAILED!
Trudeau left Parliament in 1984 leaving a 200 Billion Debt. Mulroney left in 1994 leaving a 540+ Billion Debt with a massive (for those days) 40 Billion Deficit. Canada’s past prime ministers Chretien and Martin, apparently the only REAL stewards of the Canadian Economy, left a massive surplus and a 450 Billion debt (roughly) from their efforts on debt reduction and job creation.
Following Republican/Conservative “Voodoo Economics” (Bush 41 called it right before becoming a coward and retracting it) Canada has wiped out their efforts over the last decade in obtaining REAL freedom over a long haul (National Economic Autonomy)
The decade of Conservativism that started in 2000 with the Bush 43 administration has been a complete waste of time, money and effort…..
We can only wonder how bad it will be in 4 years time from now, since there hasn’t been any Conservative Prime Minister that left a smaller or equal national deficit and debt going all the way back to John A MacDonald in the 1800s.
This government has been living in another world where the sky is some colour other than blue.
Their Finance Minister Flaherty has been telling us for years that the Cdn economy is in great shape, even though it is 80%… or more… dependent on the US Economy to sustain the exports that are fundamental to Canada’s prosperity. The US economy has not responded to mis-used stimulous money, and it has not shown ANY signs of imminent recovery since BEFORE the collapse in 2008 (three years ago). The inevitable outcome of this circumstance is a decline in Canadian economic growth, an inevitability that everyone but Stevie and the Finance Minister seems to have noticed.
(Now, here’s where we get repetitive.) The tragedy in this story is that this outcome was highly predictable with just a basic economics background in the years leading up to the 2008 collapse. Finance Minister Martin even allowed for it in his budgets well before Stevie and his Finance Minister arrived. In spite of this, Stevie and the Finance Minister have been slashing revenue to the treasury and spending like drunken sailors on programs of no strategic value to this country’s future. They have shattered R&D spending, which reveals a contempt for the future and foretells of future slashes to strategic investing in Canada, including allowing our medical system to atrophy. (Stevie was the president of the National Citizens’ Coalition, a group started up by an insurance industry mavin with the intention of killing the Canada Health Act.)
Couple these signs of incompetence to their past record of misconduct, disregard for reality and the average voter, and you can see they are taking us down a path towards a US Style system in which the average citizen is in second place to corporate ownership of the political system. This is WRONG!
No comments:
Post a Comment