Tag Archive: 2008 Year in Review

As our Canadian dollar soars at and/or above par with the U.S. Dollar, manufacturers lament its threat to lost exports even as they fail to pass the savings along to us.  For example, Bombardier, Canada’s darling of industry (measured against their industrious pursuit of Canadian tax dollars to stay afloat), sells its made-in-Canada Ski-Doo Legend Touring Model for $10,199 in Canada and $8,349 in the U.S., a difference of 22%.

Amid outcry’s that the massive discharge of energy from a new particle generator that lies underneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland could create a tiny black hole with the potential to consume the entire earth, that generator, 27 kilometers in circumference went online on 10 September 2008. Nine days later on 19 September 2008, operation of the new particle accelerator was halted due to a serious fault between two superconducting bending magnets.  Coincidentally, this was about same time that the global financial markets started to melt down and governments began throwing good money after bad at bankers and financial institutions everywhere even as people were reporting a giant sucking sound coming from Switzerland. [Okay, I’m making up the part about the sucking sound coming from Switzerland, although, as the banking Capital of the world, who can blame me?]

A report released by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) in November 2007 warned of the growing size and severity of Canada’s looming infrastructure crisis. Authors of the report estimated the national municipal infrastructure deficit to be $123 billion. This does not include new infrastructure needs, which authors of the report estimated to be an additional $115 billion.  In her recent article on disaster capitalism, Naomi Klein wrote, “The American Society of Civil Engineers has warned that the United States has fallen so far behind in maintaining its public infrastructure – roads, bridges, schools, dams – that it would take more than a trillion and a half dollars over five years to bring it back up to standard.”  Other reports have estimated that the U.S. would have to spend as much as $500 billion over the next 20 years in order to overcome this crisis.

One year later, in November 2008, analysts, politicians and experts everywhere are at a loss for how anyone anywhere is ever going to be able to come up with a plan to combat a tanking global economy.  Suddenly the light comes on and they … 1) give trillions of dollars to the banks in order to stimulate a housing and automotive industry so they can continue to build and sell their products to a populace that has neither the jobs nor the money to pay for them.

Canadian PM Stephen Harper, translates all of the bailout messages from south of the border as one might expect an economist cum political opportunist would.  He shovels gobs of money that is not his over to bankers who don’t really need it, attempts to pass a law that would bankrupt his political opposition parties and having failed in that bid he grabs his paroguechute in order to bail himself out by sending parliament home for an extended GM autoworker kind of holiday.  He then proceeds to load the Canadian Senate with a record (for one day) number of patronage appointments.  This is why he makes the big bucks. Who else could have come up with such a simple solution to a crisis that seems to have stymied so many other experts the world over?

White House Spokesman Tony Fratto insisted that “it is not a bailout for wall street” and urged reporters to drop the b-word from their vocabulary.  His argument was that taxpayers were getting an ownership stake in the ailing investment banks and assets in return for their money.  Sadly those assets the taxpayers are buying represent investments that no-one else wants and the ones that our investment-banker buddies would not touch with a “700 billion” foot pole.  One MacLeans reporter summed this up best when he compared the bankers (and now the Auto Industry and every other business who wants to muscle in on a piece of the action) to someone putting a gun to your head and saying, “Don’t think of this as a mugging think of it as an investment in safety. By giving me your wallet you are reducing the murder rate.”

Avast! number of pirates took to the waters around Somalia in 2008.  Among their long and growing list of victims were a Ukrainian ship laden with arms (including 33 Russian battle tanks) and a Saudi Oil tanker containing two million barrels of oil worth $100 million.   The pirates were demanding the bargain basement prices (when compared to the billion dollar demands we have come to expect from their more polished North American cousins) of $20 million and $25 million, respectively, for their safe returns. Prince Saud of Saudi Arabia told reporters, “Like terrorism, it [piracy] is an evil that has to be eradicated“.  Imagine an OPEC or Oil Company representative blaming someone else for partaking in some honest to Robin Hoodness extortion. Regardless, I am sure all the bad guys will eventually sort things out among themselves and pass the costs along to the consumers/tax payers.  Already there is an unprecedented number of military warships patrolling the Gulf of Aden with even the Russians cooperating in an effort to protect the interests of big business (at the taxpayers’ expense).