As the rest of the world speculates which bank/country/continent will require another bailout, Canada serves as a “shining” example on how to escape the debt spiral, Jim O’Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, told CNBC on Tuesday.
“It’s easy to say every developed country has problems – but Canada doesn’t,” O’Neill said.
The country – home to 32 million people – had its “own severe debt problems, and yet demonstrated that you can undertake supply-side structural reforms” successfully.
[…]
Canada “is a shining example to the rest of the world,” on how to bounce back from the recession, O’Neill said.
It avoided the sharp downturn other major advanced nations endured by limiting leverage, protecting consumers, and avoiding excessive deregulation of their financial industry.
… the question is … who to thank? Martin … Harper … both?
What Cjunk! You can’t find anyone more respectable than those Obama supportin Goldman Sachs creeps.
It’s pretty obvious that they’re bragging Canada up in order to catch some reflected glory for themselves. They talk Canada up in order to imply that they are of the same mind. Sounds and looks like their still using the same old underhanded tactics to me.
But besides that, wasn’t it the IMF that put a loaded gun to Canada’ s head and said “change your ways or your gonna catch some lead”.
SDA is quoting ponzi masters Goldman “god’s firm” Sachs as proof that “we’re not like them”?
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
wingwalker
Cry. We have 85% of our economy joined at the hip with America. The only thing saving our butts now is the fact we never had the mortgage con, because our politicians where to concerned about being voted in. As well a Western conservative surge put the breaks on the Complete socialization of everything by a Reform party winning 50 seats first round.. Plus the fact provinces own their own resources & we never lost our Provincial rights in a civil war.
Our best Ace is the fact we are overflowing with Natural resources. Oil being but one. Australia is shielded by this as well.
Having oil always helps.
JMO
Well, (steeling myself for the opprobrium sure to come), I’d say John Maynard Keynes deserves some credit.
Keynes’ theory was that governments should inject money into the economy during bad times, through deficits, and then take money out of the economy during good times, through surpluses.
Over the years, politicians have perverted this policy to one of “all injections, all the time”, which is why practically every “developed” nation is now broke. We were one of the few that actually did run surpluses, which is one reason we’re not as badly damaged by the recession as others, and why our credit situation – while not pretty by any means – is not as dire as some others.
Certainly many of those named above deserve credit as well, but it was JMK who showed them the way.
Being told this by the chief economist of Goldman Sachs is like having Satan compliment you on your upstanding moral character.
Posted by: Wes at June 4, 2010 1:15 PM
Just what I was going to say!..and..
We are not out of the woods yet by any means kids.
Posted by: Watcher at June 4, 2010 1:03 PM
Goldman Sachs showed the PIGS how to conceal their red ink. Now the Euro should be devalued by 33%.
Nasty, tricky and ex-executives work in most key US government power rooms.
Lobby power bigger than BP and Chevron et all.
Slackjaw chose the path of least resistance while Martin played thief. With 3 majority guvs kruton could have easily slashed public spending, maintained the military and began dismantling the obscene public unions–At 90cents/buck of tax money it must be similar in other western countries, in my opinion is THE problem across the board.
Read the last sentence of Cjunk’s opening comment again. It says “It (Canada)avoided the sharp downturn other major advanced nations endured by limiting leverage, protecting consumers, and avoiding excessive deregulation of their financial industry”.
Canada’s banking system that is referred to in the above sentence was put in place some time ago and was tweaked on occasion. The political economic policies, good or bad, of a succession of finance ministers is a separate topic, although is part of the “weathering the crisis” mix.
A country needs both, a good banking system and a good governmental revenue/expenditure system.
Something Chavez is screwing up now.
“We were one of the few that actually did run surpluses”
~KevinB
I never understood how we could have $600 Billion in national debt and the government overtaxes people by $11 Billion above what was budgeted to be spent by the government and people think it’s a “surplus”.
If I had a debt of 60K/annum and I had 11K left after taxes in the spring I sure wouldn’t be foolish enough to think of it as a surplus.
You better believe every penny of it would go toward paying down that debt.
That “surplus” that Keynes was talking about meant “when the country was debt free” and the overtaxation that collected it would be a drag on the economy just as surely as debt servicing costs are.
The worst thing about Keynes is that his economic theory is used as an excuse for out-of-control subsidization and he never took into account human nature and new social programs every year with their associated ramping costs.
When the Great Recession is over Kensian economics will be discredited, like socialism will, because they have the same innate flaw.
Both theories ignore true human nature.
Preston Manning & Harper!
What’s all this nonsense about invasion?
If Canada was ever invaded we would just negotiate handing over Quebec and Toronto! End of story everyones happy (except the suckers who took em, of course). By then Canada could rebuild properly and be a force to not mess with.
Simple no?
No Travis, I don’t give any credence to Preston and Reform. Fact is, in a majority government no one gives a damn what the opposition says, particularly the Canadian public. The seminal moment which turned it for the Chretien government was the threatened downgrading of Canada sovereign securities by Moodys. That was the all hands on deck moment.
Reform was irrelevant to this. All through the first half dozen years after 1993, Reform’s political popular support slowly but steadily tanked. When an opposition party loses support, no one listens to it because even their own voters are becoming disenchanted. As cjunk noted earlier, Reform had already dumped itself into the Social Credit loony bin basket on economic policy by proposing to deregulate the financial system.
Pete, give me a break. Manning was never a credible electoral threat to even the Rhinoceros Party had it still existed, let alone the Liberal machine anywhere east of Manitoba. Or are you forgetting about the fact that Ontario and all points east persisted in voting PC and for Joe Clarke and not Reform? No one in Ottawa gave a damn about right wing views because the right was split, hence irrelevant.
Reg, more foolishness. When does any government dismantle the institutions that get them elected?
Blame Crash, no it wasn’t IMF. It was a credit rating downgrade starting with Moodys.
KPD, you really don’t know very much about Canada’s economy do you? Go here:
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cis-sic.nsf/eng/h_00013.html#vla2b
You will find that manufacturing outweighs natural resources by at least two to one. And as for your stupid remarks about “allowing us to live there”, it’s all too typical of you Yanks to piss off the only people who are your friends. Must be why you have so few of them.
Goldman Sachs the people who brought us exotic financial instruments and the other instruments that conmen love endorse Canada’s debt structure.
Hmmm must be really solid. Think I’ll short them now.
Goldman Sachs the people who brought us exotic financial instruments and the other instruments that conmen love endorse Canada’s debt structure.
Hmmm must be really solid. Think I’ll short them now.
“It avoided the sharp downturn other major advanced nations endured by limiting leverage, protecting consumers, and avoiding excessive deregulation of their financial industry.”
?
Im confused. wasn’t ronald raygun the champion of deregulation?
rightoid hypocrisy raises its 7 heads again.
This is crap. There NEVER was any sweeping deregulation of US financial markets aside from eliminating Q ceilings and repealing Steaglass, which had nothing to do with the crisis. Canada actually had fewer and more sensible regulation than America-no forcing banks to make bad loans, a more conservative central bank policy, and all provinces except Alberta have laws that prevent debtors from simply chucking their keys at the bank and walking away (ie protecting the property rights of banks).
And Canada is not without problems; our private debt levels are very high in large part because the Con government is pushing the CMHC to loan like crazy.
When someone accuses Paul Martin of ‘downloading’, what they are really saying is that he made the sort of cuts to government that they could only fantasize about now with Harper in charge but they don’t want to give him credit because he’s on the wrong team.