Carney promises Canadians lower taxes, lots of high-paying union jobs, and a competitive economy that builds what the world needs

As anybody with two functioning brain cells can readily deduce, Carney's roadmap for Canada is a mashup of wishful thinking and delusion. "Fortune may favour the bold," but not until the bold move beyond empty platitudes and hollow declarations of virtue. Think the world loves us for "our values?" Maybe, but I'm guessing about zero percent of our foreign trade happens because our counter-parties are choosing to buy Canadian because they fancy our values. I rather expect these decisions are based on more traditional attributes, such as the ability to provide quality product at a reasonable price. And that's exactly why it's such a struggle to diversify away from our over-dependence on the US market. Geography gives us an advantage over India or China in the US. Unfortunately, aside from a handful of natural resources, there is nothing available from Canada that is competitive in the global marketplace. In fact, our manufacturing sector is globally uncompetitive, and one thing I can predict with some certainty is that the road to changing that will definitely NOT involve "creating lots of high-paying union jobs." So what was the point of Carney's delusional half-hour pep talk last night? He's applying the lube, as it were, buttering us up for the Big Budget Reveal coming on November 4. It is on that day that we'll learn just what sacrifices our bankster-in-charge has in mind for us. Get ready for the austerity enema of a lifetime!

Globe and Mail tells you twice, in case you missed it the first time

The folks on the bridge of the Good Ship Globe & Mail want you to believe that the USA was a benign hegemon from 1945 till January 20 of this year. Sure, those Yanks may have made a misstep here or there once or twice, but that's to be expected when the weight of the world is on your shoulders, and besides, even those missteps were clearly cases of good intentions gone sour - through no fault of America, of course.

Yup, for over seventy years the planet basked in an unprecedented era of peace and freedom and democracy and prosperity, thanks to America's leadership.

Then Donald ascended to the oval office and darkness descended on the planet.

Just how dark is it?

Oh, dark enough to give Doug Saunders some prime Focus section real estate in today's paper. Chances are if you're a regular G&M reader you already know Doug's opinion on Trump, so there's nothing new here.

Maybe that's why the guys who make the big decisions at 351 King decided to commission an article by an actual history professor from U of T to run right beside Doug's rant saying more or less the same stuff.

See! Doug's not full of shit; real live history professors from Canada's number one university agree with him!

In fairness, Doug does see a bit of a silver lining; "the West may regroup," whereas our U of T historian claims "the fracturing of the transatlantic relationship is a disaster for the world."

What's been a disaster for much of the world has been the last seventy plus years of American leadership. Sure, Western Europe has enjoyed relative peace and prosperity, but there's more to the world than Western Europe.

How has Southeast Asia enjoyed these last seventy years of US leadership?

Or Central America?

Or Afghanistan or Iraq or Libya?

How are our European allies enjoying the refugee crisis that US foreign policy has gifted them?

How are the people of Greece enjoying the austerity enema that our idol Angela has been forcing on them for the past few years?

Yes, great things will happen if the West "regroups" behind the leadership of big-bank toadies Merkel and Macron!

Doug, I fear you are sadly mistaken.

Night did not fall on the 20th of January. In much of the world, it's been getting darker for a long time.

Trump is a mere symptom.

"American exceptionalism" is the disease.

Merkel to Greeks; no relief from austerity enema

One can only marvel at the myopic arrogance Frau Merkel demonstrates in her proclamations to the people of Greece. We hope the new government in Greece will stay the course in governing, finally, for the people of Greece instead of for German banks and foreign bondholders.

Let's not forget that much of Greece's accumulated debt is the result of extravagant military spending over the past thirty years, spending always applauded by the same suspects who now expect the Greek people to endure generations of making do with less to atone for the profligacy of the NATO acolytes who ran up the debt.

There are other problems of course. The Greek elite have been world leaders in the art and science of tax evasion ever since taxes were first invented. (by the Greeks, if I'm not mistaken!) PM Tsipras and his finance minister have let it be known they intend to change that, and hopefully they will not be cowed by the threats of the tycoons to move abroad. Since they're not paying their taxes anyway, that's not exactly much of a loss.

The main reason for Merkel's dire warning and Schaeuble's patronizing tone, as if scolding an errant child, is that these champions of the decaying old order realize history has arrived at a moment where too many are seeing that the emperor is stark naked.

"There's no arguing with us about this..."

Let's not argue then. The truth is, the EU and NATO need Greece far more than Greece needs them.

With voter turnout at almost 40%, Ukraine election seen as great success!

You always know your "democracy" is in trouble when over half the eligible voters can't be bothered to vote. That seems to be the case with today's election in Ukraine.

That dismal turn-out comes in spite of the Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird having issued an inspirational paean to the virtues of freedom and democracy mere hours before the polls opened. Ya gotta love that bit about "resiliency and determination for a better future."

We'll see how the Ukrainians feel about freedom and democracy when they get the full course treatment of Frau Merkel's austerity enema!

Goodbye dreams of European integration!

You'll note that Baird boasts of Canada's generous complement of Ukrainian-Canadian election observers on the ground. That observer mission breaks the cardinal rule of election observer missions; don't empower partisans to determine the fairness of elections.

While that might look beyond sketchy in the rest of the world, the Harper gang is counting on big numbers from the Ukrainian-Canadian community in the next Canadian Federal Election.

Last time round, Big Steve won a majority on the strength of 25% of eligible voters.

Since then, there's been a lot of Canadians shaking their heads at the multiplicity of anti-democratic initiatives emanating from Harper's government.

If those grateful hyphenated Ukrainians turn up to vote, they could make all the difference in the next Canadian federal election.

The Harper gang's Ukraine policy is absolutely brazen self-serving political opportunism and little else.

Hollande the Conqueror now Hollande the Loser

Remember the glory days?

Those glory days when no less an authority than BHL announced to the world that Hollande had earned his spurs?..

Was that in Mali?.. Libya?.. Central African Republic?..

As usual, it is proven yet again that BHL is FOS.

Full Of Shit.

Not that this latest debacle will diminish BHL's standing in the intellectual salons of Paris.

France is known world-wide for having the stupidest intellectuals after the US and Canada.

Zimbabwe has a more vibrant intellectual community than France.

BHL wouldn't last five minutes in Zimbabwe without being unmasked as a total fraud...

Anyway, back to the motherland.

While Hollande may be fucked, France is not.

Due to the successes of France's education system, there remain millions of Frenchman who recognize immediately that Merkel's "austerity enema" is not the only option.

They recognize that Hollande's loss is the nation's gain.

Fuck austerity!

Go France!

God smites Iceland with another volcano as Icelandic statanists continue to defy global banking brotherhood

Yes, that great Central Banker in the sky is mightily pissed with those uppity Icelanders.

The Almighty gave them a warning shot back in 2010, a couple of years after they had decided to salute the banking brotherhood with a collective middle finger instead of toeing the line and condemning all 3,400 Icelanders to several centuries worth of the infamous "austerity enema" so popular in Ireland and Greece, among others.

Obviously those rogues learned nothing from that warning shot, so the real deal is bubbling just below the surface now, set to explode at any moment...

Let that be a lesson to peons everywhere who harbour fantasies about standing up to the global banking brotherhood.

That brotherhood is beyond global; it's celestial.

Neo-Thatcherites double down on stupidity

So the austerity enema isn't working?

Well alrighty then... just jam that hose up there a little further and double the water-pressure!

Something's bound to give...

That's the Osborne-Cameron prescription for UK prosperity.

Let's see now... doesn't work, haint worked ever, and haint ever gonna work, but lets double down anyway because we haint got no other ideas.

If there's ever been a buncha discredited twats laying ruin to the empire, it's gotta be this lot.

They truly are intent on out-flanking Blair in the arsehole sweeps.

Seven more years of pain?

Hey folks, it's time to rise up...

Tell the twats to fuck right off.

Now!

Hollande declares Euro-crisis over!

Which came as startling news to 350 million Europeans!

Hollande made his declaration during a visit to Japan.  Assured by his top advisers that the Japanese did not have access to the internet, and that no one in Japan could read the English/French/German newspapers, he went out on a limb thinking he might be able to slip this whopper past his hosts.

This is but the latest example of the French President's inner circle giving him a bum steer. It was the court philosopher BHL who convinced the naive waif Hollande that invading Mali would be a good move.

Hollande fully believed he would "earn his spurs," as the persuasive Levy so seductively put it.

Not only did he fail to win any spurs, now he cannot figure out how to get out of Mali!

Nor does he have any clue how to turn around an economy that continues to shed jobs and accumulate debt. He remains totally befuddled about how to escape Merkel's austerity enema when in reality it would take merely two words; nein danke.

But it might do him good to visit a sovereign nation that doesn't do austerity and doesn't take orders from Merkel. If such independence is possible for Japan, perhaps it is possible for France too.

Changing times...

It's much too soon to gloat, but there are hopeful signs all across the horizon.

The intellectual back-stops of austerity have been revealed as frauds.

That will be good news for the many millions who are more than tired of the Merkel-induced and Reinhart and Rogoff inspired "austerity enema" from Greece to Spain to Cyprus to Italy and beyond.

Little people across the board are less inclined to give the free pass to the banksters who have weaseled multiple billions out of the public purse over the past few years.

Ultra-conservative Alberta has a major labour uprising on its hands.

And Jason Collins just made it OK to be gay.

The shape of a new world is coming into focus.

Top Harvard economists get caught making stuff up and nobody cares

Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff are the Crosby and Ovechkin of economics.

A few years ago they wrote a book that provided the indisputable proof that the likes of Angela Merkel et al need to justify the austerity enema.

Economies just can't grow if they have too much debt.

That's music to the ears of slash and burn right-wing politicians everywhere.

"See! Your pension and your wage and your benefits are crippling the economy! We gotta cut back now!!!!... "

So along comes an economics student a few years later and tries to replicate their theoretic models. He tries and he tries with no success.

Finally he respectfully requests their original data. They oblige.

And their model still doesn't work!

In other words, the link between their research and their conclusion is mostly imaginary.

One would like to think that the revelation of such nefarious hijinx would result in outrage, opprobrium, loss of tenure... something.

Instead, it has resulted in next to nothing. Krugman writes about it in his blog and that's about the extent of the outrage and opprobrium.

There are of course very sound reasons why mainstream media are happy to let this story float by.

Mainstream media is owned by the same folks who think your pension and your wages are way too generous.

More austerity please!

Greeks will leave Euro, end of world nigh

It's all over the news, except they're still mostly sliding in the modifier "might".

Ain't no "might" about it.

The people have had enough of the austerity enema.

According to the mainstream scare-mongers, once Greece says goodbye to the Euro and welcome back to the drachma, all hell will break loose.

And I'm quite sure the "global capital markets" will do some serious heavy breathing.

Not to worry.

Underneath that Rumpelstiltskin economy that thrives by passing paper around a daisy chain of insiders, there is still a real economy where real people make real stuff and provide services that really matter.

In the short term, global capital markets will indeed have a shudder.

In the long run, the people who can do real stuff and provide meaningful services will be fine.

But a lot of straw-spinners will be out of work.

Germans saying "nein danke" to Merkel's austerity enema

They exercised their democratic franchise in Westphalia yesterday.

The result was what the media call a "resounding defeat".

A resounding defeat for the Merkel austerity agenda.

A resounding defeat for the IMF and the international banksters who have been flogging this austerity nonsense as though it is the only course that will save us from the lake of fire.

A resounding defeat for the "fuck the people, save the banks" mantra that has been echoing around the world these last few years.

Finally, a vote for common sense and the common good!