$99,832

310 million people meets 47 million on food stamps, meets 20 million illegal aliens, meets a low paying nonproducing service economy, meets mandatory “free” Universal Health Care for all.

What train wreck?

maybe Flaherty could teach them the 'n' word they need to know...

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/world/archives/2012/04/20120428-121439.html

TORONTO - Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty dropped the n-word last week and taxpayers across Canada should be glad he did.

The forum was an International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting in New York. Its members had just tried, for the second time in eight weeks, to hit up Canada for a loan of, well, let's just say it was something in the order of a lazy $7 billion or so.

True to his conservative financial instincts, Flaherty wasn't having any of it. So he leaned forward and uttered a word now so rarely heard in global financial circles that many wondered if they'd heard him correctly the first time.

They had. He just said `no.'

In doing so he put Canada at odds with almost the entire membership of the G20. All members (bar the US) backed the IMF's Christine Lagarde's effort to raise more than $400-billion (U.S.) to build a financial buffer against the threat posed by the seemingly endless Eurozone debt crisis.

Flaherty's reason for denying the IMF's plea for funds is simple.

Until nations like Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain - to name just a few - take their fiscal settings off stupid and cease spending like drunken matelots, reduce their borrowings, trim inflated civil services and generally behave like grown-ups instead of spoilt children, Canada will deny the bailout funds everyone knows will just go into more profligate spending.

"They need to step up to the plate and overwhelm this issue with their own resources," Flaherty said with considered understatement. "There are adequate resources in Europe to address these issues and they ought to be employed."

Put simply, more debt does not solve a debt problem. Anyone in small business knows that.

If you walked into your local bank here in Canada as the head of a failing business and said you wanted to borrow more money to get out of debt you'd be laughed out of the building.

Flaherty would also probably concede in private that it's pretty rich for the world's wealthiest trading bloc to be asking Canadian taxpayers for a handout when the IMF was specifically established in 1945 to help developing countries.

That's why it's called the International Monetary Fund. Not the European Monetary Fund or the Save Failed Socialist Eurozone States From Themselves Fund.

Bemused >

Well said.

We don't want or need Europe’s Socialist one world government and self serving Progressive Liberal idealism.

Kudos’s to Flaherty for telling them to piss off, not so much for recent Alberta voters that decided that European Progressive Liberalism and the UN operative Alison Redford was better placed to control Alberta's energy reserves. On whose behalf, let’s all take one big fat guess.

It is pronounced recession, but spelled o-u-t-s-o-u-r-c-i-n-g.

Wrong behindtheenemylines.

It is pronounced depression and spelt O-b-a-m-a-s.

50% of population not paying any taxes, industry mired in red-tape, banks effectively insolvent, credit downgrade for US dollar, the food stamp president and his redistribution schemes have FAILED. Joe the plumber was right, Obamao wrong.

Here's the deal guys, you work hard and pay lots of tax and I sit back and collect. The problem is there is not enough of you guys and to many MES. This is what has got us where we are. When there is so many that feel that the rich owe them a living the whole system comes crashing down.

Captain is surprised by how much inflation there has been since 2005? Has he been in a grocery store in the United States? Bought health insurance? Had a car repaired?

So lemme see if I have this right. All us old guys, the ones with the 4% growth were wrong and the Baby Boomers with their 2.2% growth and TV shows like "Mad Men" and "Magic City" which prove how dishonest and corrupt we were and vast entitlements and massive regulation were right? That about it? All I have to say is there's only 21 million of us left. And if you want what we built you are going to have to make it yourself. If you can.

John, I have to plead guilty in those regards.

1. My girlfriend cooks for me and pays for the ingredients. So I buy her martinis and take her dancing so I have no experienced the food inflation.

2. Health insurance, yes, surprisingly it was very cheap for a catastrphoic insurance policy.

3. I repair my own car and motorcycle. THough, unless it's really bad then I have to take it in.

But yes, I do agree there was a lot of inflation, I just fortified myself against it.