Market News International Says That Jim Flaherty is Full of Crap

Jim Flaherty's latest economic update makes him sound like he might know what he's doing. But the sad truth is, he doesn't have a clue.

Market News International questions his judgement, when he says he'll balance the books by 2015.

They may be balanced by then, but only if we can get rid of Flaherty by 2011. Otherwise, we're toast.

The Canadian government boasts this week about the great shape Canada's finances are in compared with the United States and other distressed advanced economies, but critics at home beg to differ or at least to amend.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty took to the speech circuit this week while his Finance Department issued a 42-page Fiscal Update extolling at every turn how superior is Canada's financial and economic state of affairs to that of the United States, particularly. The minority Conservative government, which took office in February 2006, sits atop the greatest federal deficits in Canada's history, after inheriting a dozen years of federal surpluses culminating in a C$42 billion annual surplus ....

TD Economics's chief economist David Burleton has lower medium-term projections than the Finance Ministry, and he said the government will have to actually follow through on restraining expenditures. Opposition parties and other critics note that the minority Conservative government was a high-spender before the recession began and its stimulus spending only increased the level. They also call for spending restraint, although some would extend the infrastructure stimulus part of it. The Fiscal Update offered no policy or significant program spending changes.

Those spending restraints have to include: no more signs, no more taxpayer funded self-promotion ads, no more corporate tax cuts, no fighter jets, no more photo-ops, etc., etc., etc.