Further Restraining Restrained Times

Money markets are restrained. Credit markets are restrained. Stock markets are restrained.

On the financial horizon nothing is in motion anywhere. In market based economies health is built upon movement. Money must be in motion. Credit must be fluid. Stocks must be bought and sold within a trustful environment.

But money, credit and stocks are all restrained.

So what do responsive governments around the world do?

They attempt to induce motion. They inject capital into frozen credit markets. They spend money to attempt to make money move again. They become involved in supporting the viability of the stock markets if not the outright buying and selling of stocks.

Every country in the world is engaged in this endeavour to try to head off the worst financial meltdown since the 1930s and the first truly globalized financial meltdown.

Every country in the world except Canada.

What does Canada do?

Canada imposes more restraints.

Alone in the world Canada implicitly says that it trusts that the markets will sort things out.

The partisan hack job was to be expected. As I've said before the Conservatives see no difference between policy and politics although this is perhaps the clearest example they've flung up so far.

The likelihood of the Liberals and the NDP forming a working coalition government is somewhere between zero and zip.

We'd best prepare ourselves for the probability of Canada's economy going so deeply into the tank that no level of government will any longer have the fiscal capacity to pay for anything at all.

The Conservative pipe dream.