More On Flaherty's Gambling Addiction and Harper's Fraud

As I posted a few days ago, on how Jim Flaherty had gambled away our future, many others are sounding the alarm about the financial mess that he and his enabler Stephen Harper (aka: Guy Giorno) have gotten us into.

It's too bad God deserted Jim Flaherty's friend, Charles McVety years ago, because clearly that man is going to need a prayer soon.

As for Canada, I doubt we even have a prayer at all that can now save us.

Frances Russel for the Winnipeg Free Press calls it all smoke and mirrors.

That $57,000 Muskoka "lake" in the $1.9 million "Experience Canada" media centre isn't all that's fake about Canada's image as host country for the G8 and G20 summits. The real charade is Canada's preaching to the world about the strengths of Canada's banking system -- and using that "strength" to lead the opposition to an international bank tax -- while giving Canada's banks a massive bailout.

The financial media have virtually ignored Ottawa's $200-billion low-interest line of credit to help Canada's banks weather the recession and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.'s $125-billion purchase of questionable mortgages and other rotten paper held by the banks when the crash came in the fall of 2008. Both were part of the 2009 federal budget.

Neither has stopped Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty from touring world capitals to boast that Canada, alone, never had to loan or guarantee one red cent for its banks and would mount the barricades to protect Canada's solid and prudent financial institutions from being gouged to save the "reckless" banking systems and taxpayers of other countries.

She calls it smoke and mirrors. I call it lying.

Of course I lived in Ontario when Jim Flaherty was our provincial finance minister, and lying was actually part of their party platform.

Ralph Surette for the Chronicle Herald is also well aware of the fraud that has not only been played on the Canadian people but all members of the G20 Nations:

The banks were actually "bailed out" to the tune of $125 billion just before and after the 2008 election — in the form of a massive purchase of questionable mortgages and other "rotten paper," in the words of one economist, held by them. This was done through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, a federal agency. The taxpayer is now on the hook for these mortgages, 40 per cent of which are considered at risk, with more to come if interest rates rise and the economy dips again.

But the kicker is this: Hardly anybody noticed. It wasn’t an issue in the election, and the financial press said nothing. A few tried, and are still trying, to raise the alarm. Michel Chossudovsky, a retired University of Ottawa economist and head of the Montreal-based Centre for Research on Globalization, pointed out that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty had announced a $2.3-billion surplus in the offing before the election, then quickly changed it to a $64-billion deficit. He argues that the entire deficit was for the first installments of the bailout, which the prime minister described as "not a bailout" but a "market transaction."

... As for the banks, here’s the rest of the story. Bank profits have boomed after the "not a bailout." The Big Six have made some $5 billion in each of the last two quarters. Last year, the banks gave their top dudes over $8 billion in bonuses. This year, they’ve put away $5 billion so far for this exercise in legalized theft. Meanwhile, the Harper tax cuts — which will have Canada with the lowest corporate tax rates in the G7 by 2012 — is giving the banks a gift of some $200 million per quarter at present rates of profit. Voices in the wilderness call for banks to be regulated like a public utility, which is what they are, in order to stop this "wealth by stealth" operation. Others call on the federal government to resume borrowing, on its own behalf and that of the provinces and municipalities, from the Bank of Canada, bypassing commercial rates — as it did before 1974. With Harper in power and nobody noticing anything, good luck with that.

Wake up media, or this country is going to be in serious trouble, since Harper has made our economy almost completely contingent on the Americans.

Signs are mounting that the U.S. economic recovery is losing steam as stimulus measures fade and companies remain reluctant to hire. A collection of readings Thursday from diverse areas of the economy – housing, manufacturing, employment and construction – all reinforced the sense that the expansion of the world’s largest economy is decelerating in the face of considerable headwinds.

And with Flaherty touting derivatives, a high octane, high risk form of trading, we're hanging by our fingernails. Germany is smartening up. I'd be happy if this government just did something smart.

German lawmakers on Friday approved a government bill that would cement in law and extend curbs on speculative trading practices following the country's abrupt imposition of restrictions in May. The bill — which the government said is aimed at speeding agreement on stronger European rules, but the opposition denounced as ineffective — passed parliament's lower house with the votes of Chancellor Angela Merkel's centre-right coalition.

Wake up people and start demanding some answers. This is your money and your children's future that they are blowing.