Steve - The Fundamentals Are NOT Strong

In today's editorial, The Globe & Mail points out what should be obvious - the fundamentals of Canada's economy are anything but strong:

The sound you hear is the air being sucked out of a previously buoyant Canadian economy. Yesterday, the Toronto Stock Exchange fell by nearly 7 per cent. Spectators of economic collapse rightly have had their eyes fixed on the United States, but since Sept. 1 Canada's premier stock market has fallen 21 per cent versus a 9 per cent drop for the Dow Jones index. In the past three months, not a single Canadian company was listed on the TSX for the first time, a surefire sign of anxiety among corporate leaders.

The Bank of Canada was forced last month to pump $3-billion into the overnight money market, and billions more in other short-term money markets in an effort to ease liquidity issues in the banking sector. Growth projections have been steadily scaled back, exports are threatened by the sorry state of the U.S. consumer and, in the so-called real economy, junior resource firms and some manufacturers are having to ratchet back spending because of the historic squeeze on credit.

All this has been greeted by near silence from our political leaders. In the midst of a federal election campaign, the party leaders – Prime Minister Stephen Harper prominent among them – are saying precious little at all about the deteriorating economic situation and what they are saying has been of precious little value. It's as if they have jointly taken a page from Kim Campbell's discredited 1993 playbook – that elections are no time for serious policy discussions.

So, when Steve Harper keeps parroting that "the fundamentals of the Canadian economy are strong," he's not merely wrong, he's lying through his teeth to you.

This fanciful notion that Canada, as a resource and commodities economy, will remain healthy is nonsense, pure bullshit. That might be arguable if we traded our products widely through the world economy but we don't. We sell almost all our stuff to the United States and, in case you haven't noticed, they're in the crapper. When you've got one customer and that customer goes broke, the fundamentals of your economy are anything but strong.

Steve, time to cut the crap. We've got to talk about this.