any comparison to greece is ridiculous. greece is not a money issuer. canada is entirely *unable* to enter the situation that greece is in for the simple reason that it can deflate it's own currency. greece cannot deflate it's currency because it's run by the european central bank. and, in fact, the solution to the problem in greece is very canadian - they need to implement a transfer solution. much like the federal government transfers money from the haves to the have-nots.

harper understands this. he assumes you don't. he might be right. but, don't fall for it. the structural reality is that canada cannot end up like greece, unless it were to, say, adopt the american dollar as it's currency.

regarding the deficit, he slashed taxes too low and relied on record oil prices to make up for it. on the surface, it looks rather foolish.

if greece went back to using it's own currency, it would be worth something like a quarter of the euro. that's the core of the problem: the way the eurozone is set up is incoherent. it simply doesn't make sense for the greek economy to use the same currency as the german economy. if you're going to have a financial union like that, you need to have some kind of political union that balances these things out. this is a problem we've resolved in canada. it would be nice to see him show a little leadership and suggest the obvious solution, rather than scare monger with what he damned well knows are economic fallacies.

www.cbc.ca/news/business/don-pittis-canadian-economy-needs-to-get-out-of-election-mode-1.3166265

Humans Suck @Jessica Murray
Well, they went and loaned Greece more money that they know can't be repaid. I bet the only reason they did so was because the "migrants" that the EU government loves so much will want their welfare cheques.

So, yes, I can understand Greeks rioting and backlashing at these "migrants", Golden Dawn style. If my kid was going hungry, but some foreign jerk was getting free food, yep. I think Greeks are absolutely sick of this, and that's why they tried to vote themselves OUT of the EU, so that can kick these African and Middle Eastern MOOCHERS out of their country.

Jessica Murray@Humans Suck
see, this is also a preposterous perspective. the eu has four of the g8 countries, and a lot of peripheral countries which much smaller economies. it's very similar to canada, which has a few very wealthy provinces and a number of outlying provinces.

the purpose of equalization payments is to address the fact that a province like new brunswick is unable to generate the same tax revenue as a province like alberta. in order to maintain a comparable quality of life, new brunswick takes tax transfers from alberta and spends it on services.

europe either needs to move to a federal system that recognizes that unequal tax bases require systemic wealth redistribution [that is, make these permanent bailout structural and permanent] or it needs to move to a smaller eurozone composed of countries with similarly strengthed economies. it can't have it both ways.

that has nothing to do with canada, which is a money creator and sovereign debt holder, quite unlike greece.

caulking the window

jessica
hi

i don't mind doing it, if you get me the caulk and let me use your gun.

it's good news and bad news. good news is that the pesticide is working. bad news is that there's at least a hundred dead ants in there. i'm going to leave them there for now, but i think it needs to be caulked relatively soon.

the landlord
I do have the caulking in my car. Sorry I have been busy and have not had the chance to come by. Pleae be patient I will come soon.

the canadian prime minister is warning that the opposition is going to create situations as occur in greece, should they be elected. openly fallacious fear mongering. give this a watch before you fall for it.

you kind got off topic there...

isis are some pretty bad bad guys. about the worst bad kind of bad guy that you could get. a little of it might be propaganda, but the crux of it seems pretty bad, regardless. they seem to be a front for saudi interests, and that gets to the heart of some nasty problems with american foreign policy. my analysis of this is that they're trying to stop a proxy war between saudi arabia and turkey, out of a political vacuum that's arisen in the region. essentially, the saudis and turks are fighting over control of the area in what is being (perhaps falsely) assumed as a post-russian sphere. that converts it into some kind of war against the saudis, on behalf of the turks. the saudis are trying to maintain a plausible deniability level of distance, but the americans don't really believe it.

but, i'm stealing your video to make a different point.

whatever you think about this, it places the canadian left in an ideological and policy position that needs clarification and rethinking. and, i think this is something that should be a part of the upcoming election cycle.

the ndp have held to principled foreign policy issues out of their role as a perennial protest party. now that they're looking at power, you can expect them to sound a little more like liberals. not a total abandonment of principle (the liberals were always relatively principled on foreign policy to begin with), but maybe a bit of a shot of reality into the principled perspective. the problem with this is that the liberal position has become untenable in the period of time that's elapsed since they last formed  a government.

the liberal party position on intervention has been pretty consistent since the establishment of the united nations, and it's to uphold the security council, the various conventions (including the geneva convention) and the rule of international law. their decision to go into afghanistan and serbia and stay out of iraq wasn't intuitive kneejerking, or even based on domestic politics. it was out of a very long standing tradition of moving with the un, rather than with nato. harper has realigned this position to one where canada just sticks to whatever nato (or increasingly just america) does. one would expect that an incoming liberal (or ndp) government would be likely to retreat back to the internationalist, united nations position.

...except that the iraq war has rendered the united nations useless. the russians have pointed very heavily towards the resolution on libya as the point where the un became toothless. whatever you point to as the breaking point, there has been a breaking point. this idea of the united nations as an arbiter is really out the window.

today, the united states does whatever it wants. in fact, the united states executive branch does whatever it wants. it doesn't seek approval from the united nations, and it ignores it when it votes against it. it doesn't seek approval from congress. it doesn't seek approval from nato. it follows no concept of international law, and doesn't care if it breaks it. as this has been developing, canada has had a government that has embraced their contempt.

so, where does that leave the canadian left in reformulating it's policy on intervention?

i happen to think that isis deserved a good bombing. these are really, really bad guys and if you leave them in place they'll do really, really bad things.

but, i think that there needs to be a post-un legal framework in place that allows us to come to that conclusion via more than gut instinct.

"we think the russians have been waiting for the ukrainians to do something that would justify an intervention"

really. the indiscriminate shelling isn't enough? contrary to the statements from the podium, putin was under extreme internal pressure to intervene. what we've been seeing is a strong rise in russian nationalism, and this narrative that putin (and russia) is too weak to defend it's own brethren.

rather, it seems to me that the entire point of this is to try and draw the russians into a quagmire to see them drain their resources and get them distracted. a la afghanistan. well, it worked back then. and what the americans are ultimately drawing on is their own failure in vietnam. a russia that is pre-occupied with a conflict on it's borders is a russia that is less of an annoyance in syria and other places that the americans are trying to redraw the map around.

for a while, it looked like the russians had fallen for it, but they stepped back.