Of Iceland And Canada

Krugman has some interesting numbers comparing Iceland with other European basket cases. It turns out that by not following the economically orthodox advice spouted by folks like our PM, Iceland has weathered its disaster better than its contemporaries, even though its economy was essentially destroyed by its banking class. Krugman finishes by writing this:

The moral of the story seems to be that if you’re going to have a crisis, it’s better to have a really, really bad one. Otherwise, you’ll end up taking the advice of people who assure you that even more suffering will cure what ails you.

Sadly, Canada's recession was not as bad as Iceland's and now were are going to gut ourselves with a dull knife, on the advice of a Prime Minister, who said there was no chance of a recession in the first place.

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Roh Roh

News Item: U.S. New Home Sales Drop 33% in May, to Record Low. This sounds like a perfect time for austerity.

Update: Retail sales drop 2% in April. Yup, seems like the perfect time to make the lives of ordinary folks miserable.

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Krugman Must Be Stopped

He is making way too much sense in a world dominated by the guy who thought there was no recession coming in the fall of 2008.

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Jesus On A Crutch

The guy who told us that we wouldn't even have a recession, is now telling us, despite a crisis in Europe (and the definite threat of a double dip) that now is a good time to stop spending. The guy is a fucking genius.

Update: Krugman's view.

Update 2: It is criminally stupid to be worried about inflation in the middle of a deflation crisis.

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Stephen Harper, Economist

From the Globe:

Reguly: Do you regret cutting the GST now?

Harper: No, not at all.

Reguly: No?Harper: No, it's ... First of all, I believe cutting all taxes is good policy, okay? I... I'm of the school that... You know, there's two schools in economics on this, one is that there are some good taxes and the other is that no taxes are good taxes. I'm in the latter category. I don't believe any taxes are good taxes.

Harper is from the don't tax but spend school of economics. He believes the way to build a prosperous nation is to not to pay cash up front for goods and services through taxes, but to borrow heavily from Chinese investors. The way Steve sees it, this strategy has worked so well for the United States, that we would be fools not to get a piece of that action for ourselves.

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Meanwhile

Our nuclear industry is in meltdown (no pun intended). You are doing a heckofa job Steve.

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The Other Face Of The Two-Faced Prime Minister

No longer combative, Harper calls for co-operation in drafting federal budget They should have added, "this week".

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Meanwhile...

According to David Akin, the Conservatives okayed a scheme to allow Canadian forces personnel to join Bush's war in Iraq, but failed to let anyone else know.

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Political Genius? Ha

The MSM is starting to notice that Steve looks anything but a political genius when he is dealing with anything other than destroying the Liberal Party. The Cadman Affair and Naftagate expose Harper and his henchmen as completely unable to handle theirs jobs with anything approaching competence. If all there was to politics and government was exploiting divisions in a political opponent, Steve would be my guy. However, politics and especially government require more than a guy who knows how to set people against each other. They require someone who actually knows how to run an organization and get along with others, when it is in the interest of the nation (rather than his party) to so. Sadly, Steve possesses neither of those qualities.

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