Carney rules

By Erica Alini - Friday, November 4, 2011 at 6:03 PM - 0 Comments

Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney was named chairman of the Financial Stability Board on Friday, a global banking watchdog in charge of preventing the repeat of another 2008-style financial meltdown. He’s now one the highest-profile voices on global finance. The world will stop to listen when he speaks. How did he get there?

Mark Carney.

Profile: Carney has it all. With a doctorate in economics from Oxford, 13 years spent working as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs, and a brilliant record in government—not just at the Bank of Canada but at the Department of Finance as well—Carney brings to the table a mix of academic credentials, Wall Street credibility and public sector expertise few central bankers can match.

It’s at the helm of the Bank of Canada that Carney started turning heads among policy makers the world over. In March 2008, only a month into his new job as the bank’s governor and well before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, he slashed interest rates, demonstrating an early grasp of the true depth of the turmoil brewing in the financial markets. In 2009 he raised eyebrows again by taking the unprecedented step of promising to keep rates low for 15 months in order to see the weak Canadian economy through rough times. Two years later, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke borrowed a page from Carney’s book by promising near-zero interest rates in the U.S. through 2013.

Carney is also a true believer. The Financial Stability Board “needs a person who really believes in the need for the Financial Stability Board,” says Chris Ragan, a professor of economics at McGill University and a former special advisor at the Bank of Canada. Our central banker is known as a staunch supporter of new and tougher rules for the financial markets. “If some institutions feel pressure today,” he said little over a month ago in Washington, “it is because they have done too little for too long, rather than because they are being asked to do too much, too soon.”

According to Thomas Bernes, executive director at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, the top three items on Carney’s agenda as he takes the reins of the world’s banking watchdog are likely to be:

1.    New regulations on the $60 trillion so-called shadow banking system, which includes non-bank financial entities such as insurance companies and money market funds. Though these institutions perform many bank-like activities, they are not properly “banks,” and are not–for now–subject to the same strict requirements and oversight as banks.

2.    More supervision of the opaque global derivatives market. Financial instruments called over-the-counter derivatives are widely blamed for spreading risk throughout the markets in ways that are difficult to track and predict. A breakdown in the derivatives market dragged down the entire financial system when Lehman Brothers collapsed 2008.

3.    Tighter rules and scrutiny of institutions judged “too big to fail,”—those whose demise poses a significant threat to the entire financial system. Among them are U.S. banks such as Carney’s former employer Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase.

Good to Know: Don’t mess with Mark. A former Wall Streeter himself, Carney has no problems locking horns with the titans of global finance. When JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon attacked Carney during a private meeting in Washington two months ago, Canada’s central banker retorted with a vibrant public speech in defence of tougher capital requirements for institutions like JPMorgan. Dimon later called Carney to apologize.

Fun Fact: He was a hockey goalie at Harvard in the 1980s.

Used cars, new prices

By Richard Warnica - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 10:15 AM - 0 Comments

When the American housing market collapsed in 2008, another sector of the economy took off: used cars. In the three years since the financial crisis hit, the average price of a late-model used vehicle in the U.S. has grown by over 50 per cent, from US$15,000 in 2008 to over US$23,000 this past July, according to the Kelley Blue Book, an industry indicator.

Even as the economic recovery slowed this year, used cars continued to boom. Sale volumes and dealer profitability both climbed in the first half of 2011, say analysts at Manheim, an auction house. The company’s Used Vehicle Value Index hit a record high over that stretch. Prices haven’t soared for all models, though. Among older vehicles—those between five and 10 years old—there are still bargains to be found, says Dennis DesRosiers, an auto sector analyst. But “once you get into the Mercedes and the BMWs, the prices are just outrageous.” Because of the better financing often available for new cars, some consumers are actually paying more every month today for a high-end used vehicle than they would for a similar new one, DesRosiers says.

The biggest reason for the boom: supply and demand. When the financial crisis hit, credit dried up and new car sales collapsed. Between 2005 and 2007, the U.S. averaged about 15 million new cars sold every year. By 2009, that number had fallen to about 10.5 million. At the same time, many banks stopped offering lease support. Fewer new cars sold three years ago means fewer used cars available today. And with so little supply, “it’s getting harder and harder to find a bargain,” says Alec Gutierrez, the manager of vehicle valuation for the Kelley Blue Book.

Continue…

Google graph too small to show S&P/TSX tumble this morning

By Erica Alini - Monday, August 8, 2011 at 12:09 PM - 33 Comments

The Canadian stock market took such a dive this morning it went–literally–through the bottom of a Google Graph of the S&P/TSX Composite, the Canuck benchmark index (see this screenshot we took at 10.14 AM). The drop was largely attributed to Standard and Poor’s downgrading of the US’s long-term creditworthiness from AAA to AA plus on Friday.  The S&P/TSX Composite tumbled over 3 per cent in early morning trading before rebounding slightly.

Fannie, I wish I'd never seen your face

By Colby Cosh - Friday, May 27, 2011 at 7:16 AM - 67 Comments

This transcript of a public-radio interview with New York Times finance writer Gretchen Morgenson is long. I would have everyone read it anyway. Like the Great Depression before it, the Great Recession has put free markets on the defensive. It’s not quite clear to me how fair this is. It is surely fair at least to some trivial degree, in the sense that markets are ultimately made up of regrettably fallible humans, prone to superstitions and herd behaviour and poor judgments of risk. But everyone seems to have managed to take the lesson that is most convenient for himself from the crisis; for those on the left it has been “markets fail”, and for those in the muddled mixed-economy middle it has been “regulators fail to smack those nasty markets back into line”.

What I see when I look at the origins of the financial pandemic is the story “government-sponsored enterprises that subsidize crazy lending practices and puppetize legislators fail.” Mortgage-writing institutions did things throughout the late 1990s and early oh-ohs that weren’t just likely to turn out badly; they made enormous amounts of loans that were practically certain to go bust in the short-to-medium term, loans that your mother could have told you would go sour. It wasn’t a “free” market that relaxed mortgage underwriting standards to the point of annihilation; it wasn’t a “free” market that put unskilled workers in million-dollar homes in the Sand States, or that spent too long ignoring the rising default rates that resulted. Continue…

Easy money men

By Chris Sorensen - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 43 Comments

Carney (below) slashed interest rates and kept Canadians spending—but helped fuel debt—while Flaherty tightened mortgage rules | Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

When Mark Carney took over as governor of the Bank of Canada in early 2008, he had relatively little central banking experience under his belt. As fate would have it, the former Goldman Sachs managing director got plenty of opportunity to test his mettle later that year when the U.S. financial crisis erupted. He responded, perhaps predictably, by slashing already low interest rates until, by April 2009, they stood near zero. But he also took the unusual step of telling Canadians that rates would likely stay there until mid-2010.

It was a departure from the style of central banking popularized by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who was once dubbed “maestro” for his seeming ability to orchestrate economic growth (critics would say “bubbles”) through the 1990s and early 2000s. Greenspan’s speeches and statements were often masterworks of ambiguity, forcing investors to parse their true meaning and lending the man behind them an Oz-like aura.

Continue…

Investing: the fear factor

By Julia Belluz - Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 1 Comment

Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters

Julie Tyios was already a savvy investor by her mid-20s, when the Great Recession hit. “I had played the markets before, and watched my parents live off their stock portfolios,” she says. But the small-business owner wasn’t prepared for seeing half of her portfolio wiped out in 2008, an experience that was, to say the least, “very upsetting.” Since then, Tyios has avoided the stock market altogether. The fear of losing so much again overshadows the possible joy she may glean from a gain. “As much as I would love to invest, the recession did a lot of damage to the market.” And, more than that, it did a lot of damage to the psychology of today’s investors.

In these fragile economic times, Tyios is not alone in her fear. Colin Camerer, a behavioural economist and professor at the California Institute of Technology, says, “During the worst part of the crisis, everybody—from the average investor up to the chairman of the Federal Reserve—was simply afraid.” That fear continues to linger, even with the worst of the recession now a full two years behind us. “My hunch is that the effective memory window, for which fear will impact people’s behaviour, is about three years,” he adds.

Continue…

Jet set on the cheap

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 1 Comment

JetSuite

The discount airline model has transformed the air travel industry. Now can it do the same for the private jet business? A California company called JetSuite is offering use of charter jets for one-way, low-cost (relatively speaking) fares. For instance, for US$999, passengers can travel from Van Nuys, Calif., to Las Vegas. And that doesn’t just buy a seat, it gets you the entire plane.

To keep costs down, JetSuite flies four-seat, fuel-efficient Embraer jets. And it keeps routes short (fares go up based on hours in the air). The airline is one of several moving to offer lower cost private jet services. Lufthansa Private Jet recently offered 30 per cent discounts for Canadian travellers.

During the financial crisis, executives were sharply criticized for their use of private jets, which became symbols of Wall Street excess. Steep discounts may be the surest way to revive, and rehabilitate, the industry.

A savings safety net

By Peter Shawn Taylor, Jullia Belluz - Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 12:40 PM - 11 Comments

Hernandez has put 15 years' worth of savings into his new Toronto restaurant. Most people aim for a retirement income of 60 per cent of their working-life income. | Jessica Darmanin / Pawel Dwulit/GetStock

Carlπos Hernandez understands the restaurant business. The retirement business, on the other hand, is a bit of a mystery.

After a career spent working in other people’s kitchens, Hernandez, a native of El Salvador, is on the verge of opening his own restaurant. Inigo, in downtown Toronto, will offer takeout Portuguese churrasqueira-inspired fare—oven-roasted chicken, salads and brown rice. At 48, Hernandez felt it was time he became his own boss. So he’s sunk 15 years of savings into his venture.

While most financial advisers would argue against putting a lifetime of savings into a single, risky asset, the chef figures he knows his way around a kitchen counter much better than a stock portfolio. If the restaurant flops, however, he’ll be left with nothing.

“This is a gamble,” Hernandez admits of his foray into the notoriously fickle restaurant industry. “But it’s all I know. I’m not thinking in terms of a retirement plan.”

Continue…

Amid the chaos, a few kind words for the Tea Party

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 2 Comments

Win McNamee/Getty Images

From a call for hope in 2008 to a cry of anger in 2010. The politics of the United States is nothing if not malleable.

After Barack Obama’s historic and hope-filled ascension to the presidency two years ago, the American electoral scene has been swamped by disillusionment over the policy direction of the federal government, massive increases in public spending, persistent unemployment and a sense of unfulfilled national promise. The surprising success in this week’s mid-term elections of the Tea Party movement, a loosely organized group of mostly Republican voters, has revealed a legitimate and deep-seated anger among American voters. It may be flawed, but the Tea Party cannot be ignored.

Inspired by an on-air rant in February 2009 by CNBC business editor Rick Santelli, the Tea Party has quickly grown into a political movement with very specific interests. Its supporters are hyper-focused on limiting the powers of the federal government, lowering taxes and bending Washington’s ear to these demands. Critics contend, with some justification, that such simplicity ignores the complexities of the real world. And a few high profile Tea Party candidates are clearly not ready for prime time. But simplicity sells. Grassroots populist movements such as the Tea Party have a long and respectable history in North America because of their ability to express popular sentiment. And anger seems a perfectly understandable emotion for Americans to be feeling in 2010.

Continue…

Watching Wall Street squirm

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at a hearing in Washington in 2009 | Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg News/Getty Images

The surging popularity of documentaries in recent years can be personified by two ungainly, cartoon-like personalities: Michael Moore and the emperor penguin. Moore has directed four of the 10 top-grossing documentaries during the past decade, including Farenheit 9/11, which holds the No. 1 position. Right behind it, March of the Penguins leads a host of nature and environmental films that occupy another five spots. This year has produced a remarkable crop of hard-hitting documentaries, films about big issues designed to sound an alarm and make us angry. But they have a more sobering style; they’re not personality-driven. There’s no Moore or Bill Maher or Al Gore performing for the camera as a hectoring tour guide. These are movies that pummel us with pure fact.

Lucy Walker’s Countdown to Zero marshals indisputable data to show that the world is closer to the brink of nuclear catastrophe than at any time since the Cold War. With Waiting for “Superman”, David Guggenheim, the director of An Inconvenient Truth, charts the dire crisis of America’s school system. And now, in a devastating documentary called Inside Job, Charles Ferguson unravels the causes of the 2008 financial meltdown, laying blame with the tenacity of a criminal prosecutor.

Continue…

Killing the 'vampire squid'

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 8:40 AM - 0 Comments

Jim Young/Reuters/ Jonathan Fickies/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Goldman Sachs has an image problem. Unlike the rest of America, the legendary Wall Street firm emerged from the financial crisis a big winner, paying huge bonuses to its employees after shrewdly betting against the same mortgaged-backed securities it helped create, and which were blamed for the financial meltdown that followed.

Memorably dubbed by Rolling Stone as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,” Goldman is now trying to remake its image into that of a valuable financial partner, as opposed to a ruthless carpetbagger. It has taken out ads in several newspapers that feature the windmills of an unnamed green-energy client, suggesting its financial dealings are good for the country. The problem? Some are concerned the billions currently being poured into green industries will result in another bubble. And Goldman, judging by the ads, once again appears to be in the thick of the action.

Which way is up?

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

The world’s central bankers and politicians were praised for their coordinated response to the 2008 financial crisis. But as the global economy limps along, it turns out that managing the so-called recovery may prove to be the biggest challenge yet. Unlike the credit crunch, which was fixed by throwing massive amounts of money at it, there’s no longer a clear path forward for the economy now that interest rates are near zero and billions worth of stimulus have failed to produce the desired effect.

With the key U.S. economy sputtering along with the rest of the world’s, the debate continues to rage about whether even more stimulus is needed to avoid another downturn. Last week, a group of some 300 economists signed a letter calling for the U.S. government to keep the spending taps open in an effort to juice an economy that continues to shed jobs. “History suggests that a tenuous recovery is no time to practise austerity,” said the group, organized by the left-leaning Campaign for America’s Future. On the other hand, there are concerns about further inflating the deficit—already forecast to be US$1.3 trillion this fiscal year—lest the country’s ballooning debt drag it into the abyss.

Continue…

Why America turned on Obama

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, July 27, 2010 at 5:20 PM - 0 Comments

Brooks Kraft/CORBIS/ Jonathan Ernst/Reuters/ Alex Brandon/AP

This month, President Barack Obama signed into law a financial reform bill aimed at preventing another financial crisis. It cost him financial backers on Wall Street, but gave consumers new protections and government more regulatory oversight powers. The financial reform bill came on the heels of the hard-fought health-care reform law, which for the first time provides insurance coverage for all Americans. That in turn followed the successful rescue of the U.S. automotive sector and a massive stimulus bill full of Democratic policy victories, like a huge expansion of federal support for environmentally friendly energy technologies. In his first year and a half in office, Obama put the first Latina on the Supreme Court and is on track to have three women on the top court for the first time in U.S. history. He reached an arms control deal with the Russians and picked up a Nobel Peace Prize. It’s been decades since any president has accomplished so much so quickly—and all this without headlines about West Wing interns.

Continue…

News flash: no free lunch after all

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 10:05 AM - 116 Comments

Fraser Institute study confirms what was already plain as day: fiscal “stimulus” had nothing to do with the recovery. Using Statistics Canada data, they find:

Of the 1.1 percentage point improvement in economic growth between the second and third quarter, government consumption and government investment each contributed only 0.1 percentage points. Business investment contributed 0.8 percentage points and was the driving force behind the improvement in economic growth.

Of the 1.0 percentage point improvement in economic growth between the third and fourth quarter, government consumption and government investment contributed nothing. Over this period, increased net exports were the primary reason for the improvement in economic growth.

This, as I say, was obvious enough already. The recovery began at the end of Q2, long before any shovels hit the ground. Fiscal stimulus, besides ineffective, was unnecessary: the extraordinary infusion of monetary stimulus by the Bank of Canada was bound to trigger a revival in total spending. With inflation expectations knocked flat, it was to be expected that this would translate into gains in real output in the short term (though with inflation already showing signs of life, the Bank will need to be quick to withdraw the liquidity it injected).

Fiscal policy’s chief impact is on the composition of demand. It does not ultimately expand it. As was more or less the consensus in the economics profession, before the “policy panic” of 2008.

So all we got for all that federal spending was a $160-billion increase in the national debt, a pile of dubious make-work projects and a fistful of photo-ops for grinning Tory MPs. Which, after all, was always the point.

Lost decade

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 6:31 PM - 17 Comments

The good news is the TSX is now at its highest level since Sept. 26 of last year.

The bad news? It’s only lately that it retook the peak it first reached on Sept. 1, 2000.

Inside the meeting that saved the world

By Andrew Coyne - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 1:45 PM - 30 Comments

The meeting was not going well.

On Friday, Oct. 10, 2008, finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of Seven leading industrial economies had gathered in Washington for their regular fall meeting. The circumstances, of course, were anything but routine. Four weeks after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the 158-year-old Wall Street institution, the financial world was in a state of escalating panic. With banks toppling one after the other, stock markets in a death spiral, credit markets all but disabled, the meeting had taken on crucial significance.

Around the world, investors were looking to governments for salvation—only they could provide the kind of rock-solid assurances that might put a floor under the markets. A strong, united statement from the G7, and there was some hope of restoring sanity to the situation. A weak statement, or worse, a failure to agree, and the entire world financial system might well tip over the edge. Continue…

You, Sir, are nothing but a banker

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Friday, March 20, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 1 Comment

Forget the black hats; these days the bad guys wear pinstriped suits. At soccer games in Ireland, crowds are reacting to bad calls by labelling the ref “a banker,” instead of the rhyming w-word. The nefarious King Rat was a foreclosing moneylender in the British pantomimes this past Christmas. In the recent thriller The International—tag line “Everybody Pays”—Clive Owen’s cop was on the trail of murderous, arms-dealing financiers. And a sequel to Wall Street, with a recently paroled Gordon Gekko still manipulating markets through a protege, is being rushed into production.

But absolute proof that the global economic meltdown has defined the villains of our age will be available next fall, when an unnamed ABC sitcom, featuring Kelsey Grammer as a fiscal titan whose shrinking circumstances force him to become a househusband, makes its debut. After all, no one plays a pompous ass quite like the former Dr. Frasier Crane.

Continue…

Market crash exacts a toll in suicides

By Jason Kirby - Monday, January 12, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 1 Comment

It’s one of the most deeply ingrained pop-culture images of Wall Street—the distraught stockbroker out on the window ledge. During the bank bailouts in September, protesters outside the New York Stock Exchange carried signs scrawled with the word “Jump.” And a recent New Yorker cartoon made light of a banker who’d thrown himself out his office window. Now, as the crisis deepens, satire is giving way to reality. At least six suicides have already been linked to the stock market collapse.

The most recent is that of German billionaire Adolf Merckle, whose bad investment bets threatened to bring down his empire. He was killed by a train. Others include René-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, a French money manager who lost US$1 billion of his clients’ money in the Madoff scandal. A few days before Christmas he took sleeping pills, then slashed his left arm with a box cutter. London financier Kirk Stephenson threw himself in front of a train. Russell Smith, a Deutsche Bank financial adviser, killed himself after advising family friends to invest in a fund that lost them $13 million. In his suicide note he apologized for the losses and said, “I cannot survive this, financially or otherwise.” Meanwhile, Barry Fox, a former analyst at failed securities firm Bear Stearns, jumped from his 29th-storey apartment after losing his job.

Continue…

The bailout: Even more than you thought

By Duncan Hood - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 3:51 PM - 9 Comments

As this surprising graphic shows, the amount of money pledged to bail out the U.S. economy amounts to more than: the amount spent on getting a man on the moon, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Iraq War, NASA’s all-time budget and The New Deal, combined. (And yes, the numbers are inflation-adjusted.) Imagine what the U.S. could have done with that money if it didn’t have to bail out all those banks…

This graphic is from the Voltage Blog, and it’s based on numbers from this BoingBoing article.

This government sucks. Unless it blows…

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, November 24, 2008 at 4:08 PM - 72 Comments

Went to hear Paul Martin speak at the Canadian Club today. He was impassioned, articulate, and compulsively boastful, as all former politicians are — an endless recitation of his many achievements and visionary ways, all the good works he was performing before, you know…

On one point I sort of agreed with him, though: the present government cannot escape blame for the coming deficit, having raised spending at such a reckless pace since it came to office. (I would not be so churlish as to point out that spending rose even faster in the last years of the Martin government.) Still, I am stuck on one point: Martin also said he favoured running a deficit, as a means of “stimulating” the economy in this time of worldwide economic crisis.

I wanted to ask him, but didn’t: So if you were prime minister today, would you run a deficit or not? If not, then what becomes of any putative Keynesian stimulus? If so, then what’s your beef with Harper? If deficits are what’s on order, that’s what he’s fixing to deliver.

It’s one thing for green-eyeshade types like me to grump about the Harper spending record, since I don’t actually think deficits stimulate anything, except a lot of hurried, ill-thought-out “infrastructure” schemes: the bureaucrats have already been given their marching orders by the current Finance minister, namely to “get the money out the door.”

But it makes no earthly sense to be attacking the govenment for running a deficit in one breath, and calling on it to do so with the next.

CONTRARIWISE: Mind you, this sort of incoherence is rampant these days. The problem is that consumers have been spending too much — unless it’s that they’re saving too much. Banks lent far too freely, but under no circumstances should they lend less. The United States has been living beyond its means for far too long. So we’ll pitch the US government headlong into trillion dollar deficits in the name of stimulating more consumer spending, much of which will go to suck in imports. I guess this is that “pragmatism” we’ve been hearing so much about…

Megapundit: "The tentacled Ken Dryden"

By selley - Tuesday, November 18, 2008 at 2:24 PM - 7 Comments

Must-reads: Jeffrey Simpson and James Travers on the political fallout from our collapsing economy; Jonathan Kay on Tara Singh Hayer.

Casualties of the bailout
In which Stephen Harper prepares to abandon conservatism for good, and Bob Rae weeps openly into his Pinot Grigio.

Sun Media’s Greg Weston predicts tomorrow’s Speech from the Throne will “be little more than a terse statement of the obvious”—which is, in the words of a PMO official, that “the primary focus of this Parliament will be the economy, and other areas [we] committed to during the campaign … are secondary.” This likely means that measures such as the diesel fuel excise tax cut and even “the Conservatives’ hallmark crime-fighting measures will probably be pushed to the back-burner,” Weston agues. After all, hitting up “Canadian taxpayers … for billions of dollars to help rescue the economy from a tsunami of red ink” is a full-time job on its own.

The Calgary Herald’s Don Martin gets the same PMO briefing as Weston and adds tax credits for seniors and “for kids’ piano lessons” to the list of election promises we should not expect to see fulfilled in the near future. But breaking such promises pales in significance to the “horrifying” overall optics of Harper’s situation, Martin suggests. The Prime Minister “is on the record as opposing ‘Band-aid’ financial assistance for companies while insisting deep tax cuts were the way to keep corporations in Canada and defiantly declaring there would be no deficit under his watch,” Martin writes, and he’s in danger of abandoning all three in incredibly short order. That’s not necessarily his fault, of course; Canada can’t very well zag when the United States zigs. But with MPs returning to the House of Commons—and without Peter Van Loan’s silver tongue to protect him, we’d add—his life will nonetheless become increasingly difficult.

Continue…

Megapundit: Where's our Obama?

By selley - Monday, November 17, 2008 at 1:25 PM - 15 Comments

Must-reads: Rosie DiManno on race statistics; Lawrence Martin on finding a new Speaker; Doug Saunders on waiting for a European Obama; Greg Weston on Jim Prentice’s new job; Jeffrey Simpson on bailing out the Detroit Three; David Frum on the GOP’s bleak future; Don Martin on Elizabeth May.

Change we don’t believe in
Sure, the Liberal party will soon “change.” But neither it nor Canada, the pundits lament, will Change.

Ignatieff vs. Rae vs. LeBlanc is precisely the leadership race the Liberals needed, L. Ian MacDonald opines in the Montreal Gazette. For one thing, he says, “it will keep costs down at a time when the party is broke.” But more to the point, it means “amateur hour is over.” The only two legitimate candidates understand their goal is to “unite the party, fill its campaign coffers, and win the next election,” and nothing else. No young people; no new ideas; no funny business.

The Gazette‘s Don Macpherson also handicaps the race for the leadership, suggesting—weirdly, in our view—that “because of the unfortunate timing of the current leadership race, Ignatieff starts off his second run risking unfavourable comparison with the charismatic [Barack] Obama.” This is particularly true in Quebec, he argues, where election fatigue has set in and there’s nothing remotely novel about Charest vs. Marois vs. Dumont. Fair enough, but who’s Ignatieff up against? Rae and LeBlanc, and then Harper? Which of those three juggernauts is going to out-Obama Iggy?

Continue…

Megapundit: What would Elton John do?

By selley - Thursday, November 13, 2008 at 2:11 PM - 1 Comment

Miscellaneous Canadian news
Canada’s pundits are still all over the shop.

The Calgary Herald’s Don Martin surveys the various motions and proposals up for discussion at the Tories’ convention in Winnipeg and concludes “the Conservatives have buried their old guard ways under a hefty slab of mainstream ideas, even though few seem to fit with the economic challenge of governing today.” No more “abortion-limiting, capital-punishing, immigrant-curbing inclinations,” for example—and even if there were some, everybody knows Stephen Harper would lay an instantaneous smack-down on them anyway. Just lots of little ideas, some affordable, some not, and most of which “would not look out of place on a Liberal party convention floor.” Ouch.

The Globe and Mail’s Lawrence Martin pulls back the mysterious “cloak” that enshrouds Kevin Lynch, Clerk of the Privy Council, whose power has reached such levels that he can safely be considered the second most powerful man in Ottawa. (Third most powerful if you count Earl McRae.) And that power is raising some disquieting questions, Martin notes, as the ostensibly apolitical PCO “increasingly vets communications and access to information requests and has come under criticism from Information Commissioner Robert Marleau for obstructionism.” The media traditionally has little access to the executive branch of government, Martin notes, and that was fine “in the days when power was less concentrated at the centre.” Today, however, he deems this arrangement “inadequate.”

Continue…

Megapundit: The 100-second column

By selley - Wednesday, November 12, 2008 at 1:32 PM - 19 Comments

Miscellaneous Canadian news
On a weird, slow day in the world of punditry, that’s the best headline we can come up with. Sorry.

The Toronto Sun’s Peter Worthington looks at what strikes us as a rather bizarre proposal to replicate the Vimy Memorial somewhere on Canadian soil—so that Canadians can take in its replicated grandeur, obviously, but also so that they might (in the words of Bruce Stock, the Canadian veteran behind the idea) “better understand how important it is to Canada.” This strikes us as something a good history unit could accomplish better than, as Stock proposes, a privately run interpretive centre. (This harrowing portrait of trench warfare is brought to you by Monsanto!) And with all due respect to Messrs. Stock and Worthington, the $1.6 million the memorial cost in 1936 does not inflate, at 4 per cent per annum, to $13 million today. We make it roughly double that—which, at $2,500 a pop, would be enough to send nearly 11,000 students to Vimy itself. This strikes us as a super idea.

The Toronto Star’s Thomas Walkom is happy to hear the prime minister and the premiers “talking about infrastructure,” because that’s government code for not getting “too hung up on balancing their books”—i.e., running deficits. And he will resist the temptation to dismiss all the talk going on among the “so-called G20” leaders as mere bafflegab, because “in a global crisis, talk is not meaningless.” Unfortunately, he argues, General Motors and other looming catastrophes seem determined to outpace the efforts of the world’s governments to deal with them. Still, he takes solace in seeing those governments move uncommonly quickly to address “the most serious economic crisis in decades.”

Continue…