Mock Turtle

Apart from all the other issues raised by the demise (fingers crossed) of our nasty and brutish Conservative government, it’s clear that very, very few Canadians understand how our political system works. I’ve long thought that this is one reason for the anemic interest in politics in Canada, and the widespread feeling that there is no point in voting since it won’t matter anyway. We need — all across the country — mandatory civics classes (perhaps most of a year out of the junior high history curriculum) — so that citizens know how our democracy works, what our constitution says, etc. It’s hard for people who don’t understand the structure to understand how they can use it and it’s irresponsible for a society not to educate its population about its own democracy.

Other, not particularly related thoughts on the political situation:

- Wow, does CTV ever torque its stories. It’s appalling. The TV coverage is much worse, but even this web story quotes Bob Fife as if he’s a credible source rather than a reporter.

Thinking back to my days at BNN, I was asked to run many, many minutes of live coverage of Gomery, even though it had no relevance to business news and no effect on the markets. Although I didn’t make the connection at the time, I’m now thinking the edict to run Gomery probably came from Robert Hurst — or, it was an attempt by our hapless executive producer to please her partisan masters.

- The Tories’ key talking point, at least if I’m to take Pierre Poilievre seriously, is that although Harper pooh-poohed the idea of Canada being sideswiped by the worldwide — did I mention that was worldwide? — economic crisis during the campaign, he had actually been hard at work on a secret plan to protect Canada from the economic crisis that he knew was coming two years ago when he promised to lower the GST by two percentage points. As a lapsed Catholic, I’m used to trying to accept complicated metaphysical concepts like the Holy Trinity, but I’m still struggling with this one.

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The inevitable exhortation to go shopping — with a new twist. If you don’t pony up, the recession is all your fault, according to Premier McGuinty:

“But if you don’t buy that car — even though you can actually afford it — if you don’t buy that fridge, if you don’t shop at Christmas time, it can actually put us in a bit of a downward spiral.”

Honest Ed said it better, in my view: don’t just stand there – buy something!

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Generation Y confronts economic crisis

Schwartz, 26, says he’s now more realistic about the chance of landing his dream job.

“I’m going to have to be a lot less picky,” he says. “As a new grad, I’m worried I won’t be able to get a good job right away.

“You’ll really have to be the cream of crop to even just get an interview, with the way the market is.”

But stop crying in your beer in sympathy for the poor GenYers — apparently it’ll all be okay. In theory everyone is still fighting to employ them cuz they’re so, so special.

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Rae Days were hated, but that doesn’t mean they were a bad idea. I thought at the time, and continue to think now, that shutting down services for a few days and having a limited number of unpaid days off in order to keep a greater people working full-time at full-time salaries is an excellent, and thoughtful, idea. Clearly, others do too:

In a move reminiscent of “Rae Days” in Ontario, Mayor Richard Daley is closing most city services for three days this year, with another three days of shutdown to come in 2009.

It seems to me that there may be an entirely new understanding — appreciation? — of Rae’s economic approach by the time of the Liberal leadership convention in May, 2009 — which may make his campaign, which seems to be behind in the leadership race so far, the one to watch.

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According to today’s paper, the City of Toronto plans to announce a deal to impose a five-cent tax on plastic bags at a news conference today with Loblaws, Sobeys, Metro, and their lobby group, the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors. Missing in action?

The news conference is not expected to include representatives of the Retail Council of Canada, independent grocers, or the plastics industry, all of whom question the city’s legal authority to require specific action by retailers.

This is just delaying the inevitable. If the city doesn’t have the authority, the province does, and is likely to take the same step itself sometime in the not-so-distant future. So what exactly, then, is the point of pissing off city officials, and not bothering to work out some kind of deal that might be more beneficial for small retailers than a version imposed without consultation now?

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Harper speaks to reporters in Lima on November 23rd:

“Recent private sector forecasts suggest the strong possibility of a technical recession at the end of this year and the beginning of next,” Harper said [November 23] at a news conference in Lima, where he was attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. “I am surprised at this. I am further surprised by deflationary pressure that we’re seeing around world.”

Mock Turtle isn’t surprised by it — so why is the Prime Minister?

Meanwhile Flaherty acknowledges that Canada may be in a “technical recession.” What’s the difference between a technical recession and a real recession, you wonder? Well, in a technical recession you’re in an official recession, as opposed to a slowdown that companies and people feel but no data can confirm (and governments can, thus, deny). Rather than being a comforting mirage, a “technical recession” would seem to be a worse state of affairs than the generic, unqualified “recession.”

So, seeing as we’re on the verge of a recession, whose presence on the horizon is now unshrouded by the clouds that hid it from the Conservatives until yesterday, but the recession hasn’t yet technically happened, might we expect our far-seeing government to take some preventative measures to stave it off?

As it turns out — no. Seems we are just to wait until we are even more technically into a recession, and some more people have lost jobs, and then take action, after the fact. Why? Well, according to Flaherty:

“We have a stimulus of almost 2 percent of GDP in the Canadian economy . . . Fortunately, we acted in advance of other countries who have had to play catch-up on that stimulus.”

Let’s recap once more the package of tax breaks announced in the last federal budget, which have resolutely failed to stimulate consumer confidence, and the initial beneficial effects of which — if any — have now undeniably disintegrated entirely:

- Corporate income taxes cut an electrifying 1.1%, from 22.1% to 21%, in 2008.
- Additional 1% cut in GST mid-2008.
- Hmmm. Introduction of special tax credit for kids in organized sports?

I guess strong medicine like that takes a while to trickle down through the system.

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Someone told me yesterday that the Capesize cargo ships his company uses to import and export its product have fallen in price from $220,000 a day to $9,000 a day. That’s no typo — these ships can now be had for less than 10K per day. Daily rates are continuing to plummet.

The Baltic Dry Index shows the drop off in demand for cargo ships dramatically. The BDI measures the demand for cargo capacity against the supply of dry bulk cargo ships.

Ports across North America are suffering — a complete reversal of the situation a few years ago when the ports couldn’t keep up with demand and were suffering from traffic jams. Have a look at the Port of Halifax’s schedule this week. It’s not busy.

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November 21, 2008: Harper calls crisis worst since 1929

October 7, 2008: “I think there’s probably a lot of great buying opportunities emerging in the stock market as a consequence of all this panic.”

September 15, 2008: “My own belief is if we were going to have some sort of big crash or recession, we probably would have had it by now.”

(Even better, the September 15th quote actually refers to the U.S.economy — look what he said first:

“While it has slowed down considerably, and while there remains this considerable instability, the American economy has not crashed, has not itself entered into recession.”

That takes a special, ideological kind of cluelessness.)

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There’s a very entertaining profile in the New Yorker of the great Dogfish Head microbrewery and its founder, Sam Calagione — link below.  I’ve been a fan for a long time, but I’m not enough of a beer geek to know they had this kind of following.  My only concern is that this kind of publicity will catapult them from cult status to something like unavailability.  Hope my local beer superstore has a good supply arrangement…

Best quote:

“Calagione, for his part, had no time to drink. Going to the Great American Beer Festival with him, a friend of his had told me, is like attending a Star Trek convention with Captain Kirk.”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/24/081124fa_fact_bilger?currentPage=all

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Late to the party, Scotia Economics conceded at last yesterday that the Canadian housing boom is over. But fear not — we’re still different:

“This is not a ‘U.S.-style’ bust caused by overbuilding, speculative buying and imprudent lending, but rather a cyclical slowdown accompanied by a valuation adjustment in several large centres where booming demand conditions and temporary supply constraints led to an overshooting in prices.”

Oh, so that’s it. Given that we’re still building madly, in urban centres at least, it may be a little premature to make any final calls on overbuilding. I’m not really excited by the idea of a “Spain-style,” “Britain-style”, or “China-style” bust either, so fine, it’s uniquely Canadian. But could we please acknowledge that this is a global housing bust, following a global housing boom? Please?

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