When do we get our stimulus, Mr. Harper? I believe the answer is: April 1
with portions being small and not too filling.

As Stephen Harper continues his good time feel good campaign of showing up at barely functional industrial plants to inform the Canadian public that it’s not as bad as it looks. The rest of us…. and I mean the rest of the Canadian public is wondering:so where is our great initiative?

Mr. Harper’s rosy outlook, odd in comparison to the south of the border Obama : “hold on to the wife and kids… it’s gonna get very bad approach”, begs the question: what’s our elected bodies doing?
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Remember when you used to trade marbles? Or baseball cards? Or whatever else you had that someone else saw value in.

How about carbon credits?
Bartering is still going on between countries though you don’t hear much about it. Probably because it falls outside the realm of the global financial order i.e. the IMF, OPEC, and other oligopolies and their various taxing authorities. They probably would not be amused at the growth of the bartering concept.

Recently I was speaking to some college students. We were talking about global bartering as a possible solution to unlocking the stuck banking system that is fueling the recession. After all, a small business can barter just about any product or service on the internet now. Why not countries?

One of the students is Venezuelan. He pointed out that their notorious leader Mr. Chavez was already well into the international barter game. Apparently his country’s oil barters Cuba’s advanced medical services along with a few other key necessities from other South and Central American countries. Makes sense to me.
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A day doesn’t pass by without a media report relating to the economic downturn. Irrespective of its origin, architect, beneficiary or solution, a quick and robust solution to reverse this trend is inevitable. In this respect, governments around the world have been busy designing economic stimulus packages, necessitated by the unprecedented loss associated with this dire situation.

In a world of growing demand for energy and rising prices, the Canadian energy sector, a top five world energy producer, generated 5.6% of its national GDP in 2007. Canadian energy exports fuels a great deal of US energy imports, directly and indirectly breathing livelihood and economic sustenance to Canada.
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“Buy American” provisions in the U.S. stimulus package have become a hotly contested issue, perhaps nowhere more than here in Canada. Fears of protectionism have been sounded as “free-traders” prophesize dire consequences. Recall beggar-thy-neighbour, the Great Depression, World War Two: it will happen again, we are told. American protectionism will be the first step. This will be followed by retaliation. A trade war will be sparked and history will repeat itself. So what better time than Obama’s visit to Ottawa for our two leaders to deal with this impending doom. Indeed, solutions have been proposed: put the word “north” before the word “American”, scrap the phrase “buy American” altogether etc. But this is not a semantic debate. Or, if it is a semantic debate we are analyzing the wrong phrase.

Instead, we should be looking at the concept of “protectionism”. While protectionism is generally looked at purely in economic terms, we need to consider its broader meaning. In the abstract protectionism can refer to the overall protection of a state. While economics is certainly a major component of protectionism, it is not the whole story. Also, included are military protectionism, cultural protectionism, etc. Basically, these are means employed by the state to protect its self-interest.
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History is filled with change. Hopeful ideals have led the way to not only different philosophies and political regimes, but also radically progressive ways of thinking. From the French revolutionary period to the American revolution and even the baby boomer’s sexual revolution, certain instances have popped up where those young and old banned together to challenge the status quo put forth by those in power. We are now currently going through another of those times.

The baby boomers are slowly retiring giving way to new generations with different ideologies, separate perspectives, and new goals to reach. Cynicism can no longer be tolerated; where there is a will, there is always a way. Our guiding light throughout these times must be the hope we all share for a better tomorrow. The tomorrow we seek will be different from yesterday’s, but to understand the steps it will take, we must first look back and carefully analyze certain catalysts for today’s world. By doing so, we will not only understand where our society has gone wrong, but to what direction our path must be laid in order to reach the goals we all so desperately need.
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Now that President Obama has signed his massive stimulus package into law, many Americans are breathing a sigh of relief. But not necessarily the entrepreneurs.

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of running into a former client who I had not seen for about five years. He is a Canadian who made the decision to move to the USA for business reasons i.e. he wanted to make some real money. When I first met him, he was all optimism – buoyed by the fact that he had indeed made more money in his first three years in the US than his previous ten in government-dependent Canada. He enjoyed an upscale lifestyle in Boston with his New York born wife – also in business. And chirped “I’m never looking back to Canada.”
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At a recent G7 meeting in Rome, finance ministers and central bank directors from the all seven nations agreed for the need to “take measures” in order to address and slowly reverse the current economic downturn, but also pledged to avoid protectionist policies within their countries.

Jim Flaherty in particular was critical of any shift toward protectionist policies, saying that it is “populist politics” to cater to short-term interests with policies that will discourage foreign ownership, tariffs, and quotas on imports as a method of stimulating economic activity domestically. Flaherty stressed that any policies that will interfere with the global free market would only lead to more severe consequences in the future, and explained that he made this point very clearly during the meetings in Italy.

For starters, Flaherty’s use of the word “populist” to describe protectionist policies is incredibly typical of Conservative party rhetoric. Dismissing anything that strays from their narrow ideology using extreme language is a favourite tactic of Harper and Co. We need only look at the proposed coalition government of late 2008 to see how intraparty letters instructed MPs and officials to refer to the NDP as
“socialists”.
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Speaking at a Chinese New Year festival near Toronto this weekend, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he hopes that the Year of the Ox will also be the year of the return of the bull market. Our major banks would have to disagree with this statement. Both TD Bank and the Bank of Nova Scotia predict our economy will continue to shrink and will loses hundreds of thousands jobs (in addition to the hundreds of thousands already lost) by year end. US analysts predict the economy will not recover until 2010 at best.
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President Barack Obama & Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Speaking About Executive Compensation

Although Obama’s term as president is only in its infancy, he’s already impressed me in many ways. First was his ability to quickly put together an extensive stimulus plan (which took far too long for Canada to do) and then his plan to close Guantanamo Bay within a year. Now, it’s his idea to impose a salary cap for many U.S. business executives.

Obama’s plan is to place a $500,000 salary cap on executives at troubled U.S. financial institutions that accept federal bailout funds. And it’s a brilliant idea.

Here’s an excerpt from Obama’s announcement:
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