Apparently, Canada's relative success in weathering this recession is nothing to be particularly happy about. It's some kind of accident that we did better than the Americans. And anybody who is proud of how our previous government reined in corporate greed, refused to participate in banking shenanigans and what not ... well, those people are just exercising their "latent anti-Americanism".
Or not.
A cure for that smugness lies in the Bank of Canada’s latest review of the financial system, and its warnings that Canadians are still spending money they don’t have. Some facts leap out.
Yes. That's what we need: a "cure" for our "smugness". Right on. 'Cause we all hate Americans, see, and we need to be taught that we're stupid, too!
So here's how it worked. The American government struck down decades-old (even century old) laws regulating banks. They let very wise, very wealthy people run roughshod over the economy and the poor people. Those people left the economy dry as a bone and left the taxpayer holding the bag.
The Canadian government didn't do that.
So then the United States got sick. Really, really sick. And it started to affect us.
So our government and the Bank of Canada, working in tandem, cranked our interest rates down to historic lows in order to stimulate the economy by making it cheap to borrow money.
And we borrowed. And we're in debt.
See?! We're just as dumb as the Americans! Take that you pinko, leftist whackjobs!
Yeah. Yeah.
The difference, in case you missed it, was that we were smart enough not to leave Conservatives in power for too long. We can see their greed. We can see what they're going to do us. Either they'll go directly for the money, or they'll try to take out the education and health care systems first. We notice, and we kick them out.
As long as we had the Liberals in, they marched us toward surplus and conservative (!) fiscal policies with a proper long term outlook. You put Conservatives in, as the Americans did year after year after year, and you get a financial mess.
That, in the end, is the difference. We're willing to take a long term view, tax our wealthy people, and make things work. The Americans took Reagan and two Bushes, let their economy spin downward out of control and instead believed what the liars were saying instead of what they were doing.
No, that's not "anti-Americanism". It's just what happened.
And it's journalists like Derek DeCloet, Americaphiles all, who refuse to see that there are characteristic differences between the populations. It's people like that who are hurting our country by spreading this myth that we're only being different for the sake of difference.
It's time people like that, people who truly hate what this country is about, get called out for what they are: anti-Canadians.
