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Canada's real GDP has grown precisely zero per cent over the last six months. So far this year, unemployment has risen every month. We're shouldering our first national balance of payments deficit in a decade. And you have to sell the family silverware these days to pay for a tank of gas.

Not exactly a rosy economic outlook. But somebody forgot to tell the red-suspendered guys down at the stock market about all this doom and gloom. They've been partying like it's 1999. They've driven the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) composite to four all-time record highs so far in May. Happy brokers are tallying bonuses and picking out new BMWs. And there's lots more steam left in this bubble.

It seems ironic, since stock markets are supposed to be forward-looking beasts that anticipate future changes. Yet even as the fundamental measurements of Canada's economic performance stagnate (and our major customer, the U.S., slips deeper into outright recession), the stock market goes from strength to strength. There’s often a gap between the ups and downs of this paper casino, and the real-world economy that the rest of us inhabit, but this is ridiculous. What gives?

The answer, in a word, is "resources." Prices for everything from oil to potash to rice to copper have smashed historical records this year. Especially oil. Companies which produce all that mundane stuff are reaping bucketfuls of money.

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By my reckoning, however, we'd better be looking beyond the resource bandwagon that's currently rolling down Bay Street — and thinking about what we'll do for a living once it's moved on.

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Its too bad Jim Stanford and his auto workers did not start reckoning sooner and think of what to do for a living when gas is $5/gallon and his industry is busily building retro-muscle cars and large SUVs.

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Real gross domestic product edged down 0.1% in the first quarter of 2008, its first quarterly decline since the second quarter of 2003. The economy, which had started to lose momentum in the second half of 2007 as exports declined, stalled in the first quarter due to widespread cutbacks in manufacturing, most notably in motor vehicles. In addition, weather disruptions hampered economic activity in the quarter. Economic output contracted 0.2% in March. Final domestic demand advanced 0.6% in the quarter on the strength of consumer spending.

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The Commodity Futures and Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating trading in oil futures to determine whether the surge in prices to record levels is the result of manipulation or fraud. They might want to take a look at wheat, rice and corn futures while they're at it. The whole thing is a hoax cooked up by the investment banks and hedge funds who are trying to dig their way out of the trillion dollar mortgage-backed securities (MBS) mess that they created by turning garbage loans into securities.

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What if the investment banks are trading their worthless MBS and CDOs at the Fed's auction facilities and using the money ($400 billion) to drive up the price of raw materials like rice, corn, wheat, and oil?

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Originally posted by jester:
StatsCan

Yeah,Ontario lost 120,000 manufacturing jobs but Canada gained 135,000 high paying construction jobs.

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And my unemployed, lithe young niece might even have to resort to taking a seasonal job in the volatile construction industry. We've lost over 300, 000 manufacturing jobs across the country and more losses to come according to estimates.

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What if the investment banks are trading their worthless MBS and CDOs at the Fed's auction facilities and using the money ($400 billion) to drive up the price of raw materials like rice, corn, wheat, and oil?

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Originally posted by Fidel:

And my unemployed, lithe young niece might even have to resort to taking a seasonal job in the volatile construction industry. We've lost over 300, 000 manufacturing jobs across the country and more losses to come according to estimates.

Meanwhile, Canada's largest province is bottom of the heap for growth. Our's is the only province to have created more net-new public sector jobs than private over the last five years.

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Your lithe young niece can earn big bucks in the west if she has the fortitude. Young people can earn enough in a year or two to pay for a fine education or get a start in life in other ways.

Canada's largest province should get over itself and put its nose to the grindstone rather than wallowing in its humiliation. If Ontario harnessed its manufacturing capacity to producing the products that western Canada's resource industry requires (and cannot build the capacity to manufacture due to skills and infrastructure shortages), it could recoup many of those jobs.

There is not enough upgrader capacity to refine heavy oil in Canada and Ontario could provide the industrial capacity to change that.

Jim Stanford is a smart guy but he seems to personify the angst that Ontario exudes. Rather than moaning over your diminished status in Canada,get off your asses and pursue existing underserved markets rather than pursuing government bailouts for auto plants making 6 mile to the gallon retromobiles.

The great revolution is upon us. The revolution and social change that progressives have been agitating for. The detested SUV is dead. Suburbia cannot sustain itself and higher urban densities will be forced on the elites. Conservation, not consumption will be the norm. The cost of transportation will encourage local agriculture and manufacturing.

In this sea of change,what does one of Canada's leading economists do? He whines about the new driver of Canada's economy and waxes nostalgic for the status quo. The West (and the east coast) is the new economic power in Canada and Ontario would better serve itself by accepting that fact and harnessing its considerable manufacturing base rather than bemoaning resource extraction.

quote:

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Originally posted by jester:
Canada's largest province should get over itself and put its nose to the grindstone rather than wallowing in its humiliation.

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Originally posted by Fidel:

We have to get rid of our 22 percent dictatorship in Toronto first. And since we can't start off with a three-base line drive with huge natural deposits of oil and gas, Alberta-style fossil fool conservatism won't be floating our boats for us anytime soon.

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Well, maybe start off small with some Alberta-style fossil fool initiative and innovation.

Quit building 500 hp Camaros that only Alberta fossil fools can afford to drive and build solar powered tricycles with a grocery basket on the back that Toronto trendies can use to go to the farmers' market.

With Ontario's reduced revenues making the use of subsidies to hide the extent of looming electrical power shortages difficult,embracing alternative energy is a small step forward. Use your huge industrial capacity to forge an economy based on 21st century requirements,not 20th century redundancies.

When east coasters had to uproot and move to Ontario for work,no-one considered it extraordinary but when the center of the universe has its self-inflicted hard times, the whole country is supposed to come to a halt while the center of the universe analyses its rust belt and comes to the conclusion that maintaining the status quo via government intervention is preferable to the hard work of forging a new economy that can compete in the new world of $150 bbl oil and a strong loonie.

Sneer all you like about fossil fools but we work 12 hour shifts or more 7 days a week. Its not only oil and gas but also coal,potash,base metals,agricultural products and generating capacity that provides the financial resources to build and expand public infrastructure.

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OTTAWA — The total value of residential construction investment reached $19.8 billion in the first quarter of 2008, 7.5 per cent more than in the first quarter of 2007.

Most provinces registered increases and all three components of residential construction (new housing construction, renovations and acquisition costs) were up, as well.

Statistics Canada attributed the increase to a favourable job situation, growth in disposable income, flexible financing options and Western Canada's strong economy

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Nellie Cournoyea, president of the Inuvialuit Regional Corp., criticized the WWF for what she described as interfering in northern affairs.

"The Inuvialuit are sick and tired of having their future economic well-being blindsided by southern-based environmental organizations that poke their self-righteous noses into someone else's backyard without either having the decency to consult with the people that live there or offer any realistic alternatives to their economic challenges," Ms. Cournoyea said.

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Over the past 12 months, employment increased by an estimated 348,000 (+2.1%), with full time growing twice as fast as part time. The employment rate, the share of the working-age population who are employed, continued to hover around a record high in April.

Adjusted for comparability with the United States, the employment rate increased 0.5 percentage points over the last 12 months, reaching 64.5% in April 2008. This contrasts with the United States, where the rate fell 0.3 percentage points to 62.7% over the same period. Employment in construction and financial activities has declined in the United States while these industries, especially construction, have added employment in Canada over the past 12 months. Both countries, however, have experienced pronounced employment declines in manufacturing.

In April, employment increased in accommodation and food services, as well as construction. Over the past 12 months, the construction industry led employment growth, adding 113,000 workers.

Manufacturing continued its decline in April, with losses in Ontario and British Columbia. Overall, the number of factory workers has decreased by 112,000 since April 2007.

While there were small employment increases across most of the country, Manitoba was the only province with strong growth in April. Quebec, on the other hand, was the only province to experience a loss for the month.

Year-over-year growth in average hourly wages was 4.3% in April, slightly lower than earlier in the year, but continuing well above the most recent increase in the Consumer Price Index (+1.4%). Provincially, the strongest wage growth has been in Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

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First-quarter investment(in Non-Residential construction) hit $10.3 billion, up 1.6% from the fourth quarter and the 20th consecutive quarterly increase.

In constant dollars, investment in non-residential building construction declined 0.3% from the fourth quarter.

Investment increased in all three components from the fourth quarter. In the commercial component, it rose 1.6% to $6.3 billion; in the industrial component, it went up 4.0% to $1.5 billion; in the institutional component, it edged up 0.2% to $2.6 billion.

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Statistics Canada

by Bob Ingraham

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We have seen this before: Galileo Galilei (Concerning an Investigation on Dice, 1630), Giralamo Cardano (Book on Games of Chance, 1633), and Abraham de Moivre (Doctrine of Chances, 1718 [dedicated to Isaac Newton]), all examined the idea of using mathematical formulas to win at gambling. Their methods came into widespread use in 17th-Century Amsterdam, with the creation of speculative options trading. The result was the Tulip craze, and the South Sea and John Law bubbles.

In the real world, there are nearly 7 billion human beings, the vast majority of whom live in grinding poverty. The world desperately needs physical economic development, in the form of nuclear power, freshwater development, high-speed mass transit, health care, and industry. The lunatics of "mathematical finance" aren't going to provide any of this. Only the power of sovereign governments, working together, can do it. The hedge funds, the derivative markets, and all of their related betting systems should be shut down, their associated financial obligations wiped off the books, and the banking system should be tightly re-regulated. Once that is done, state-directed credit can be utilized to finance urgently needed physical economic development, and to make the world a better place for human beings

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[ 02 June 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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By my reckoning, however, we'd better be looking beyond the resource bandwagon that's currently rolling down Bay Street — and thinking about what we'll do for a living once it's moved on.

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And two old line parties have been paying them to take it off our hands, too. It's the most disgusting display of subserviance and crooked top-down management by our colonial administrators to date. They don't even care how it looks to the rest of the world anymore as long as the kick-back and the graft flows freely.

And Canada's big six banks loan our money to Americans and other superrich foreigners to finance corporate takeovers of Canada and our valuable raw materials and energy. William Krehm describes the merging of money creation and stock market gambling as combining medical practice and undertaker establishments, and then justifying the marriage as if it created the convenience of one-stop shopping.

This is why our stooges in Ottawa can't see anything wrong with propping up a U.S.-backed kleptocracy in Kabul. They are even more corrupt than them.

[ 03 June 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

The capital for both western development and for alternative energy and infrastructure reconstruction in the east is going to come out of our pension funds.

Janszen's point is that (leading in the U.S. of course) that capital movement will create the next bubble and it will dwarf the sub-prime (ABCP) phenom.

Unfortunately, in the east, industry leaving for foreign parts leaves our finance, insurance and real estate "FIRE" finance capital sector in the cat bird's seat.

So those "investment banks" are going to be using your savings to kid us all and become really creative again, jester. And yes, it's not a western resource-inspired bubble on the way. But if I were you, I'd put those savings into real estate. Arctic real estate, actually. It's gonna get warmer for us all.

Although we "eastern bastards" might get a bit cool on the way.

p.s. Both public and private funds are salivating at the prospect of taking over utilities and infrastructure system redevelopment, but municipalities and utilities are rightly afraid of having to pay more than the old bond rates for such work down the road.

[ 05 June 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

Right.
But have you any thoughts on the "real" bubble coming down the road as predicted in the Harper's piece?

quote:

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Originally posted by George Victor:
Have a boo at Eric Janszen's "The Next Bubble: Priming the markets for tomorrow's big crash" in February Harper's mag.

The capital for both western development and for alternative energy and infrastructure reconstruction in the east is going to come out of our pension funds.

Janszen's point is that (leading in the U.S. of course) that capital movement will create the next bubble and it will dwarf the sub-prime (ABCP) phenom.

Unfortunately, in the east, industry leaving for foreign parts leaves our finance, insurance and real estate "FIRE" finance capital sector in the cat bird's seat.

So those "investment banks" are going to be using your savings to kid us all and become really creative again, jester. And yes, it's not a western resource-inspired bubble on the way. But if I were you, I'd put those savings into real estate. Arctic real estate, actually. It's gonna get warmer for us all.

Although we "eastern bastards" might get a bit cool on the way.

p.s. Both public and private funds are salivating at the prospect of taking over utilities and infrastructure system redevelopment, but municipalities and utilities are rightly afraid of having to pay more than the old bond rates for such work down the road.

[ 05 June 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

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The only issue I have with your prognostications, George is your use of the present tense when the past is more appropriate.

I haven't the inclination or time to fold my tinfoil hat at an appropriately rakish angle but the issues you mention will come to the fore soon. Of course, by the time it is presented in the MSM,it will be too late for anyone content to accept the status quo and the relentless soothing spin that the worst is over.

Thank you for your advice. Please be assured that my finances are in order and I am proactively protected against penury.

If I may, I suggest watching the bond markets for indications that all is not right in financial circles.

A basic indicator of American malaise is a return of the one year treasury,forced upon the US by falling foreign treasury capital inflows. These reduced and sometimes negative inflows were masked by simultanious redemption of foreign investments by Americans but now,the bloom is off the rose,so to speak.

quote:

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Originally posted by George Victor:
Jester:
"Get used to it. This is no bubble."

Right.
But have you any thoughts on the "real" bubble coming down the road as predicted in the Harper's piece?

Or is your conscience (and mind) as clear_as that of Ms. Communicate on the subject of investment of your money, whether windfall gains or serious golden days investment? Whatever happens, happens?

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I have not as yet read the article you mention but off the top of my turnip, the "real" bubble is created by hedgehogs bigger than many sovereign nations that have 1% of their capital in cash and 99% in worthless mark to market securities.

Financial genius Bernanke has opened the Fed discount window to investment houses to relieve the credit crunch and the investment houses have promptly traded worthless SIVs for treasuries. Instead of utilising the credit provided by the Fed to relieve the credit crunch and invigorate the economy,the investment houses AND banks have thrown the crditor to the wolves and poured their free money from the Fed into commodities.

Finacial genius Henry Paulson, Treasury Secretary, has enabled this thievery by lowering capital reserve requirements from 10 to 7%.

As the financial vultures buy up all the resources with "free" money from the Fed(30 day notes but in reality rolled over for ever)and drive prices up,they simultaniously choke credit off and foreclose on assets ending up owning both the assets and the debt.

Or are you really saying that, after more than a century of western complaint about eastern bankers, finance capital there is different, has somehow reformed, the spark of human kindness kindled by the fires rendering oil from tar sands and gas flares?

And when you've "weather(ed) the mostly American crisis", will you, as "weather makers", turn to the production of dune buggies and sandals for use in the new, drier south?

Or does the future of the junior types matter a tinker's damn for the Libertarian spirit?

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Billionaire investor George Soros told the Senate today that it needs to act now to deflate a speculative bubble in the price of oil. His solution: regulation to bring prices back in line with actual supply and demand.

While admitting he's not a specialist in energy, he said commodity markets bear unmistakable signs of speculative "froth."

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More on the real reason behind high oil prices

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There is growing evidence that the recent speculative bubble in oil which has gone asymptotic since January is about to pop.

Late last month in Dallas Texas, according to one participant, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists held its annual conference where all the major oil executives and geologists were present. According to one participant, knowledgeable oil industry CEOs reached the consensus that "oil prices will likely soon drop dramatically and the long-term price increases will be in natural gas."

Just a few days earlier, Lehman Brothers, a Wall Street investment bank had said that the current oil price bubble was coming to an end. Michael Waldron, the bank's chief oil strategist, was quoted in Britain's Daily Telegraph on Apr. 24 saying, "Oil supply is outpacing demand growth. Inventories have been building since the beginning of the year.”

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But I do believe that the rush for alternate energy products AS A RESULT OF THAT OIL demand, will grow like Topsy, and be about as resilient.

Could be all wet and one huge corrective will happen Monday, we'll see.

(What I AM afraid of is that natural gas is going to go into hysterics as we find that the future there is in liquid NG imported to eastern Canada and the U.S. from benevolent dictatorships across the middle east and Russia.

The western guys are happy as a pig in shit just burning the stuff to free up the tarsands goo.

But what do you think of Janszen's reasoning, Fidel?

p.s. Just read your William Engdahl and "the hoax of peak oil" bit.

If peak oil is a hoax, all bets are off.
But I think that for an antidote to such fuzzy thoughts (wishful thinking based on oil company reports?) on peak oil, one should try James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency.

I can't see a big hole in his reasoning. How 'bout you?

[ 07 June 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

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Originally posted by George Victor:
All very uplifting stuff about the entrepreneurial spirit out there, but you jest about the nature of western finance capital, surely?

And when you've "weather(ed) the mostly American crisis", will you, as "weather makers", turn to the production of dune buggies and sandals for use in the new, drier south?

Or does the future of the junior types matter a tinker's damn for the Libertarian spirit?

Oh, but again, just what part of Janszen's article did you not understand (talk of movement of capital in and out of the U.S. aside)? The guys in charge of finance capital, who move it around, get creative as ABCP, the morally challenged types?

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In your haste to delight in frothy rhetoric,George, you neglect to actually read my responses. The "part of Janszen's article" did I not understand is quite obvious because as I stated, I have not yet had opportunity to read it.

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Or are you really saying that, after more than a century of western complaint about eastern bankers, finance capital there is different, has somehow reformed, the spark of human kindness kindled by the fires rendering oil from tar sands and gas flares?

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Just a few days earlier, Lehman Brothers, a Wall Street investment bank had said that the current oil price bubble was coming to an end. Michael Waldron, the bank's chief oil strategist, was quoted in Britain's Daily Telegraph on Apr. 24 saying, "Oil supply is outpacing demand growth. Inventories have been building since the beginning of the year.”

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Fidel, one of the most important tools the financiers and government enablers utilise is media manipulation. They will put out true rumours and false denials to spin a false sense of security.

Rather than believing any media reports by Lehman Bros,Morgan Stanley or especially Goldman Sachs, go to the official statistics releases AND read between the lines to compare apples to apples.

Don't forget that the hedgehogs "hedge" their risk by playing both the long AND short side of every trade and issue their "analysis" to lead the unwary into their honeytraps.

In the most obvious recent honeytrap, Goldman issued an opinion that gold was headed for a serious correction when in fact,it soared to over $1000/ounce. The gold market is a very good example of the huge financial capacity of hedgehogs manipulating a rather small market.

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(What I AM afraid of is that natural gas is going to go into hysterics as we find that the future there is in liquid NG imported to eastern Canada and the U.S. from benevolent dictatorships across the middle east and Russia.

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The main reasons for the fall of NG prices in North America in 2005/6 were unseasonably warm winters and opportunistic LNG imports into Texas giving a false sense of security re gas supply.

LNG imports were directed to Texas ports in the summers because of fading Asian demand, refilling NG storage capacity. One of the problems with LNG import proposals is that LNG suppliers will not commit to long-term contracts because spot prices are at least 50% higher.

Western Canadian gas requires a price of $8 to be profitable and the price of NG is around $12.50 and rising.

The good news is that the newly discovered Horn River and Montney shale gas plays in BC and the Bakken in Saskatchewan hold trillions of cubic feet of gas. EOG, Encana, and others have confirmed discoveries in the Horn River of around 6 trillion cubic feet each while the Montney play is estimated at over 60 trillion cubic feet.

Simply replying in kind to your taunting little historical piece saying the "lop-sided economic control over the ROC Ontario has enjoyed for 200 years is over" and the quote from an Inuit spokesperson about "southern-based environmental organizations that poke their self-righteous noses...", and the job situation, etc. etc.

All very satisfying, I'm sure. But I was trying to get an objective view from you about Janszen's piece and like Mae West, who "started out like Snow White", I "drifted".

All very "Stupid to the Last Drop" and "Devil Take the Hindmost" stuff.

Yes, I'm sure that the west will keep the wheels of commerce turning with new finds. In the shale deposits they will only have to be concerned about laying waste to even more ground and ground water.

No, it's the cities, towns and villages of dear old Ontari-ari-o that will have to import the liquid NG, just as we now have to bring oil from offshore.

(Unless you have some source of information about the oil patch giving up on NG use for oil extraction soon...or even hope for Mackenzie Valley stuff getting past? Or a rewrite of NAFTA to allow us to ease up on piping it south?

But enough of the Chamber of Commerce reports, already.

Bubbles.

p.s. You did know that three LNG ports are slated for Quebec's St. Lawrence, two approved and building and another on the way? It's for the U.S. mainly, of course (they won't let LNG terminals come near most New England ports) but some product will have to go west of Montreal.

[ 07 June 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

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Originally posted by jester:
The facts of the resource "bubble" is that costs are rising dramatically,inflation outside Canada is ramping up and it is likely that with production costs of unconventional resources rising dramatically,the owners of dwindling conventional resources can manipulate supply to maintain high prices.

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I think what you're describing is a giant casino economy where bettors are in charge and governments stand idly by while economies lurch from speculative bubble to speculative bubble. In 2000 it was the tech bubble, 2005 a housing bubble, and today it looks like an oil and maybe a gas bubble next. A return to cold war level military spending hasn't helped. U.S. hawks were basically printing money then to fund an illegal and immoral war of aggression in VietNam. U.S. British and Canadian conservatives even tried to blame lavish social program spending. But that whipping boy isn't around today. Since 1987 or so, bubbleheads and "the herd" have been driving wild speculation from one bet to another.

In 1996, it was the Mexican peso and so on. And increase of bubbles since the 1980's-90's seems to coincide with deregulated banking and finance?

The food bubble ecnonomy

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The economy must be restructured at "wartime speed", Lester Brown says, because we have built an "environmental bubble economy", where economic output is artificially inflated by over-consumption of the earth’s natural resources. He adds: "the destruction wrought by terrorists is likely to be small compared with the worldwide suffering if the environmental bubble economy collapses."

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[ 07 June 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by George Victor:
"Whatever am (I) on about" with my "frothy rhetoric" jester?

Simply replying in kind to your taunting little historical piece saying the "lop-sided economic control over the ROC Ontario has enjoyed for 200 years is over" and the quote from an Inuit spokesperson about "southern-based environmental organizations that poke their self-righteous noses...", and the job situation, etc. etc.

All very satisfying, I'm sure. But I was trying to get an objective view from you about Janszen's piece and like Mae West, who "started out like Snow White", I "drifted".

All very "Stupid to the Last Drop" and "Devil Take the Hindmost" stuff.

But, again, about bubbles?

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Hmmmm your reaction that any mention of western economic independence and ascendancy equates to 'taunting' speaks more to eastern ire at losing their god-given entitlement to control of the levers of power than any logical criticism of the facts. Your dismissal of Nellie as an Innuit spokesperson speaks to an uninformed eastern perspective of western priorities.

The west is part of Canada and tax flows from our resources flow to the federal government for the benefit of all Canadians.

In regard to the resource bubble, I have twice agreed with you and,after reading the Harper's article, its conclusions beforehand but you appear to be impervious to any comprehension of my responses to your queries EVEN WHEN I AM AGREEING WITH YOU.

I could write a book on this subject but perhaps you could analyse the effect of a bond market collapse in the scenario the Harper's article raises. Get back to me on that and we can discuss the effects of defined benefits pension implosions, AltA mortgages,HELOCs etc in the massive wealth transfer from the average American to the foreign holders of US Dollars.

The resource commodities are a more complex issue than bubble conspiracy theories. An emerging middle class in Asia will fuel demand for finite commodities for decades to come.Asian subsidies to protect domestic commodities prices like fuel and food from world prices are subsidised by foreign exchange surplusses denominated in American dollars. Surplusses that are less and less predicated by American consumption.

The American standard of living will sink alongside its dollar as the realities of a decade of war and profligate spending financed by foreign capital inflows come to fruition while Canada's strong finances,low inflation and resource wealth catapult its economy into a strong position to benfit from its advanced technical infrastructure and educated,motivated workforce.

quote:

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Originally posted by Fidel:

I think what you're describing is a giant casino economy where bettors are in charge and governments stand idly by while economies lurch from speculative bubble to speculative bubble. In 2000 it was the tech bubble, 2005 a housing bubble, and today it looks like an oil and maybe a gas bubble next. A return to cold war level military spending hasn't helped. U.S. hawks were basically printing money then to fund an illegal and immoral war of aggression in VietNam. U.S. British and Canadian conservatives even tried to blame lavish social program spending. But that whipping boy isn't around today. Since 1987 or so, bubbleheads and "the herd" have been driving wild speculation from one bet to another.

In 1996, it was the Mexican peso and so on. And increase of bubbles since the 1980's-90's seems to coincide with deregulated banking and finance?

[ 07 June 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Exactly. An economy where everyone is borrowing, selling and promoting but no-one is actually making anything. Living in a dreamworld - off their inheritances and paper profits

On Oil Prices, Senators Want Truth, Not Soros The London Loophole

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Soros simply did not tell the panel of the Senate Commerce Committee the truth about what's driving the exploding hyperinflation in oil prices, and they knew it. Addressing them as if they were fellow futures market speculators, Soros warned them that the "speculative bubble" in oil futures might collapse—obvious to them already—and even suggested they might keep pension funds and mutual funds from investing in oil. But he kept hidden what he knows about who's driving that speculative explosion.

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Man I think white people must find it really difficult saving up to be rich and staying that way in Zimbabwe. Of course, there's always the stock market until their friends in London and Warshington can orchestrate regime change.

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quote:

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Originally posted by jester:

Whatever makes you think that people of privilege in any poor nation have their funds in the local currency? The useless hyperinflated local currency is for the masses to wheelbarrow around, searching for basics in short supply while the privileged buy on the black market with dollars or euros.

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There are similarities with Allende's Chile before the infamous order to "make the economy scream." According to Simon Beer:

quote:

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To claim the Chilean economy was in "turmoil" is fallacious. Allende's super-inflation model was a deliberate act. The premise being that if 5% of the population have all the money and 95% have none, then inflate the cost of everything and subsidize the poor, who receive food, clothing, education and housing for free. The rich meanwhile, have to pay $50 for a loaf of bread and don't even think about a mink coat. To claim this is "turmoil" shows a misunderstanding of the circumstance. Allende knew exactly what he was doing.

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In the meantime, I can find no clear statement whereby you agree or disagree with what either Janszen or I are "on about".

Still no word on how you feel about the environmental degradation of the top third of Alberta and all those native folks downstream on the Athabasca and their more northern neighbours (didn't mean to slight Nellie, and I'll have a few really choice words for you if you go one word closer to suggesting racial intolerance or superiority on my part.

Your lack of knowledge of the history of western alienation based on antagonism to the CPR and eastern finance capital - prairie populism leading to Socred's funny money in Alberta and agrarian socialism in Saskatchewan - is not something that I thought you'd be so ready to display.

You, "Steve" and Jim keep talking about "Canada's" economy and Canada as "energy superpower" with its "well positioned economy" but you're only talking about the west.

Canadian autoworkers put together the most durable cars in their class.And how the east is to "get off its ass" and go for (what,rupees a day?) when it's the Canadian petrodollar in a competitive world market that's done them in...you must have written copy for Levant.

It's not the "getting off the ass", it's having the R and D funding to develop new technologies. A good friend designed wind turbine vanes for GE at the Peterborough plant just before retiring, but GE manufactured them on the U.S. Great PLains, Texas and California. (sorry, I know that's crying the blues)

That friend once worked for " Canadian General Electric", named when the company located in Peterborough Ontario on the Otonabee River for its hydroelectric potential in 1892. It became General Electric eight decades later.

CHina and the European Union believe in some exchange control. But finance capital in Canada wants no part of it.

Right? (I'd give a big bottle of Forty Creek for a simple yes or no statement, anywhere).

[ 07 June 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

quote:

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Originally posted by George Victor:
It's not the "getting off the ass", it's having the R and D funding to develop new technologies.

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Our's is a pliant northern colony, a vast preserve of natural resource wealth for corporate America to raid at will. And since FTA-NAFTA, our productivity gap with the U.S. has only widened. Canada's abysmal world rating for R&D and innovation is related to the fact that 36 important sectors of our economy are majority foreign-owned and controlled, and mostly by Americans.

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Originally posted by George Victor:
Well, we've escaped the fate of those that Naomi Klein has written about at least, Fidel.

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Well, we did survive the 1990's, but not all Canadians. The Mulroney-Chretien-Martin years were a time when Friedman's tight money policies and gutting of social programs were allowed to run amok even more than in the U.S. and even Britain to some extents. This is what babblers mean when they say our Liberals have governed on the right for most of their most recent twelve years in power after having made left-wing campaign promises.

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I'll get right on that bond market collapse scenario in Janszen, thanks for reading it... I think. But is that your only comment???????
In the meantime, I can find no clear statement whereby you agree or disagree with what either Janszen or I are "on about".

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The bond market collapse scenario comes from me, not Janszen. I have already agreed with the premise but noted that it is already occuring,not about to occur.

The only issue I have with your prognostications, George is your use of the present tense when the past is more appropriate.

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Still no word on how you feel about the environmental degradation of the top third of Alberta and all those native folks downstream on the Athabasca and their more northern neighbours (didn't mean to slight Nellie, and I'll have a few really choice words for you if you go one word closer to suggesting racial intolerance or superiority on my part.

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Racial intolerance or superiority on your part has nothing to do with it. If you don't know who Nellie is,you should take your own advice on western alienation.

As far as the 'environmental degradation and all those native folks is concerned,you know as much about that subject as you know about Nellie. Eastern busybodies grinding their axes over western resources.

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Your lack of knowledge of the history of western alienation based on antagonism to the CPR and eastern finance capital - prairie populism leading to Socred's funny money in Alberta and agrarian socialism in Saskatchewan - is not something that I thought you'd be so ready to display

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What are you smoking, George? If you want to discuss the Crow rates, just say so. Nice of you to make judgement before the subject arises.

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Canadian autoworkers put together the most durable cars in their class.And how the east is to "get off its ass" and go for (what,rupees a day?) when it's the Canadian petrodollar in a competitive world market that's done them in...you must have written copy for Levant.

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The Canadian petrodollar did them in? I suggest you quit whining and refer you to the aforementioned causes of western alienation such as monetary policy that only took eastern interests into consideration,leaving the west to wither.

Now, Ontario is on the ropes. Generations of Newfoundlanders have had to leave their homes to travel first to Ontario and now the west to find work. Same in Saskatchewan. Its Ontario's turn and luckily both the west and east can offer good paying jobs to our friends in Ontario.

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Originally posted by George Victor:
Still no word on how you feel about the environmental degradation of the top third of Alberta and all those native folks downstream on the Athabasca and their more northern neighbours (didn't mean to slight Nellie, and I'll have a few really choice words for you if you go one word closer to suggesting racial intolerance or superiority on my part.

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Oh before they develop a conscience, they'd sooner transform Alberta into a toxic waste dump and crook Lubicons of their billion dollar mineral rights so Americans can pay less for gasoline than we do. In Alberta, they have brown noses and green air, and next to nothing left in Heritage Fund. But that's just the way they like it, right jester?

Anyway, we can be sure that free market forces have nothing to do with the inflated price of oil at this point in time. Not when per bbl costs are around $30 dollars and the price is $120.

[ 07 June 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Fidel:

Oh before they develop a conscience, they'd sooner transform Alberta into a toxic waste dump and crook Lubicons of their billion dollar mineral rights so Americans can pay less for gasoline than we do. In Alberta, they have brown noses and green air, and next to nothing left in Heritage Fund. But that's just the way they like it, right jester?

[ 07 June 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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I'm not an Albertan so I,as well as all the envious Ontarians, have no business telling Albertans what to do. When you self-righteous Ontarians have cleaned up your own soiled nest you may have a modicrum of credibility telling others what to do. Until then,mind your own business.

I find it hugely interesting that Ontarians can wail away ad nauseum over the slings and arrows of outragious fortune,bemoaning the loss of a few thousand GM jobs while simultaniously calling for the destruction of tens of thousands of Albertan jobs without concern.

Saving jobs building large polluting vehicles in Ontario and the associated pollution of all the workers commuting to those jobs is sacrosanct but the resource jobs of the west can be disregarded because they do not add to Ontario's standard of living.

Here's a pic of an evil drilling rig polluting the environment and ruining countless lives of local residents for Ontario's self-important busybodies to swoon over.

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Using GIS to Investigate the Relationship Between Industrial Carcinogen Release and Cancer Density in Southern Ontario Counties

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The 121-page report, prepared by economist Brett Gartner at the Calgary-based Canada West Foundation, reveals Alberta, with 10 per cent of the country's population, now spews nearly a third of its greenhouse-gas emissions. "Alberta's emissions are the highest in the West by far -- nearly 1.5 times more than the other three western provinces combined."

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How Ottawa Sabotaged Our Kyoto Pledge in 2002 Quiet deal with oil industry locked in failure

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The report from Ecojustice, called Exposing Canada’s Chemical Valley, says that in 2005, facilities within 25 kilometres of Sarnia released more than 131,000 tonnes of air pollution. That’s a toxic load of more than 1,800 kilograms per Sarnia and Aamjiwnaang resident. The air pollution includes chemicals known to be harmful to health, such as mercury and dioxins.

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A toxic load of more than 1800 kilograms per resident but it doesn't matter because it isn't in those nasty oilsands.

Ontarians should pay more attention to their own backyard. While the resource market is no bubble, the subsidy of electrical power in Ontario surely is. As Ontario's economic power diminishes, it will not be able to afford importing expensive dirty coal generated power from the US to mask its undernourished generation capacity and its residents will face large increases in the cost of electrical power.

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Originally posted by Fidel:
Oh Alberta's had its share of propping up by Ottawa, for sure. Equalization was originally designed with prairie provinces in mind.

Real governments don't sell the country down taxpayer-funded pipelines, unless we're talking about the long-running stoogeocracy here in Canada.

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Well, now Ontario has the best of both worlds.Political power and access to equilisation funds provided by resource industries in both the west and the east coast.

It just comes back as "let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark" nasty, mean-spirited, flatulence.

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Originally posted by jester:
Ontarians should pay more attention to their own backyard. While the resource market is no bubble, the subsidy of electrical power in Ontario surely is

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Canada is a net exporter of massive amounts of electrical power to the U.S., just like Alberta is a net exporter of dirty fossil fuels to the same most oil-dependent and most wasteful economy in the world.

Southern Ontario used to have enough cheap electrical power. Not now though since everyone and their dogs wants central air in new housing, especially with HOT WEATHER we've experienced in recent years. That's not sustainable, and we need a plan like the NDP at both levels have proposed but to no avail so far. And like cheap oil in conservative Alberta(well now its tar sands because they've siphoned off most of the easy to access crude), that's what drove prosperous cold war economic expansion for several decades under conservative party rule. And now neither are the rule here anymore. McGuinty has weakened environmental laws to pave the way for dirty and unreliable and very expensive nuclear power expansion, and will most likely result in another Darlington nuclear megafiasco. Liberals love doing deals where tens of billions of taxpayer dollars are funelled into a few corporate hands and friends of the party, regardless of the cost-benefit analysis.

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Equilisation was originally designed to give new provinces a charitable sop rather than an equal share of political power in Canada. Equilisation was a handout designed to deflect criticism for the unequal economic power eastern Canada reserved for itself.

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Originally posted by Fidel:
I think as long as mediocre minds are transforming Alberta into toxic wastelands for the sake of appeasing petro-fascists, we're in a heap o trouble.

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How are the superior minds making out resolving that 1800 kg per resident pollution problem in Sarnia or the Guelph cancer thingy?

Strip mining of oilsands will go the way of the dinosaur as new technology makes the costs prohibitive, 90% of water usage is recycled and the oncoming deep reservoir gravity assisted technologies will mitigate many of the environmental concerns.

Rather than deflecting their own problems onto others,Ontario should embrace change and put enthusiasm into an industrial strategy aimed at competition in the 21st century.

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Housing starts in Canada surpassed expectations in May, rising to 221,300 at a seasonally adjusted annual rate, an increase from 213,900 in April.

Urban starts went up in all regions of Canada, with the exception of Ontario, which saw a decrease of 7.4 per cent to 67,600, Canada Mortgage and Housing said Monday.

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