The Canadian economy hangs by a thread...

That thread is of course more commonly known as the Keystone XL pipeline.

That's the sluice-way to getting Canada's dirty bitumen to the world. It's crucial to Canada because Canadians are smart enough to block bitumen exports at every turn. That's why exporting dirty oil through Canadian pipelines will never happen.

Which is why we're counting on stupid Americans to make it happen with Keystone.

The Canadian dollar has plunged in value from over par to around .76 in the past couple of years. Overall, I'd say that's a bit of an overreaction.  At the same time, we have Big Steve making his pronouncements about the collapsing Russian economy. When you look at the forex charts, the collapse of the Canadian dollar pretty much shadows the collapse of the ruble.

The big news today for the Canadian economy was that Barclay's issued negative reviews for the big Canadian banks. That sent shares of the big Canadian banks into the tank immediately.

What a howler that is! The only reason Barclays exists today is because it was deemed "too big to fail" seven years ago and got lots and lots of free money from the bail-out bonanza.

But now they're pontificating about the stability of Canadian banks, banks that sailed through the bail-out era in fine form without any bailout whatever!

Reminds me of the douche-bag "credit rating agencies" who kept rubber stamping all those sub-prime mortgage derivatives with AAA ratings, and then turned around and gave sovereign nations like Greece and Portugal junk status.

Why would anyone, I mean ANYONE, give a shit about what the wankers at Barclays have to say about anything?

But be that as it may, things are not looking good for the Harperites. Freedom and democracy are looking a little less free and democratic by the day.

The new "anti-terror" regs unveiled today look scary indeed. Looks like it's going to criminalize blogs like this one, if we persist in saying "Palestinians have a right to resist their occupation."

Or "Hezbollah has the right to defend southern Lebanon from Israeli attacks."

As I read it, the new "anti-terror" laws would allow the Harper gang to shut down this blog for making either of those claims.

Canadians have long prided themselves for their benign do-gooderism on the world stage.

Ya...

The deepest plunge into hell comes from the heights of naivete.