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Originally posted by Krazzyfour
U.S. economy close to 'freefall,' Greenspan says

U.S. gross domestic product will drop sharply in the fourth quarter, former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said on Friday.

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"Mah deah, there is much more money to be made in the destruction of civilization than in building it up."

-- Rhett Butler in "Gone with the Wind"

Finance minister Jim Flaherty declared today that the federal govt. is considering selling off assets (including their share in the CN Tower) to keep budget balanced.

IMO, the federal govt. is not telling us the full story.
It is possible that the economic situation here in Canada is much worse than people believe.

Harper's meeting with leaders of the banking and finance sector last week, his meeting with all provincial premiers this week and now this declaration indicates that they are trying to hide some secrets from the public.

So far the general impression is that our banking and financial sector is much more solid and our credit markets more liquid than the US and most of Europe.

Maybe that's not the case.
Maybe deep down things are actually bad - maybe as bad as the US and UK.
The problems simply haven't come up to the surface, but soon will.

Here's another thought - maybe Harper govt. knew this all along, for at least 6 months.
That is why he dragged the country into a federal election in Oct.
All that the election did is destroyed the Liberal opposition and destroyed Dion.

My thinking is that Harper knew the economic situation in Canada is bad deep down and soon it will show up.

At that point, opposition parties and public will blame the govt. and call for an election.
If election occurs then, Harper would likely have lost his govt. and quite likely lost his position as the leader of the Conservatives.
Whatever has happened to Dion now would then have happened to him.

By calling this pre-emptive election, he has ensured that when the dark secrets of our economy come out, the opposition parties and public will not call for another election since we've just had one.

This way, he secures his position for a few years at least.

Makes sense?
What do you guys think?

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"Mah deah, there is much more money to be made in the destruction of civilization than in building it up."

-- Rhett Butler in "Gone with the Wind"

Hi PratickM,

I do for some reason believe as you do that there is plenty of gunk in the Canadian financial system which hasn't surfaced as yet.Plenty of indicators to that. The recent $75b help which has been attributed to the fact that Can banks cannot get good rates from their usual sources.
However, if the proverbial scatological material hits the fan and it can be manifested that the Harper govt. knew the financial system was in dire straits but kept it all under wraps, the opposition will definitely call for a new election no matter how early after this last one, especially if more jobs are lost and credit is tightened and the public gets grumpy.
As it is many of my friends who split from here to go west for better prospects have been laid off.
Perhaps our contributors from the west can corroborate that. Are there multiple lay-offs there as here?

Harper Govt. was very much aware about the state in which economy was, and for unknown reasons Harper Govt was and is to greater extent still hiding this fact from public.

The economic news continues to be very negative and also, it is very much visible that '09 is going to be a very bad year for economy.

Everyday from every where only bad news is coming. US, China, Japan, Germany, Korea all are in deep recession and huge job losses are announced by some very big global companies due to worsening economy.

Canada is also no exception as it has also entered into recession according to many economists.

One starts selling assets under only when one is going bankrupt and Canadian Govt already announced this which clearly means admitting that all is not well.

Wait and see how bad this recession turns out to be.

It looks like it will be second biggest after great depression.

Keep well,

Cheers!

Its probably not that nasty. If things are so bad, govt would cut spending, which would in turn help balance books. This seems to be more an issue of fiscal profligacy.

Conservatives(much like other parties) do not seem to have the intestinal fortitude to take on Canada's bloated bureaucracy. So they would rather sell hard assets like CN tower than say lay-off Mr/Ms bureaucrat to meet their daily expenses and avoid/reduce fiscal deficit.

you can make 200 - 400 $ a day spending just one hour a day 5 days/ wk. Let me know if you want to know more.

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Clinton