statism watch

Heather Scoffield, The Globe and Mail
October 9, 2008

OTTAWA — Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is recognizing that Canadian families are suffering “dramatic losses” because of the global financial crisis, and is promising to take measures that will ensure borrowers have good access to credit.

In a news conference before leaving for high-stakes meetings with the Group of Seven rich countries and the International Monetary Fund in Washington over the weekend, Mr. Flaherty emphasized that Canadian banks are “solid” and “solvent” but also recognized that credit is increasingly scarce.

“We are doing everything to ensure we can navigate through these troubled waters, and protect Canadians,” Mr. Flaherty said. “The government stands ready to take whatever actions are necessary to protect the stability of the Canadian financial system.”

He would not give any specifics about what he would do to ensure better access to credit for Canadian borrowers, however. Rather, he stressed what he would not do: bail out banks.

“We are not looking at a rescue package for banks,” he told reporters. “We are not looking at creating any additional risk for taxpayers.”

He added he had “absolutely no concern about the health of our Canadian financial institutions. I have concerns about the availability of credit.”

(more…)

Bruce Campion-Smith, Toronto Star
October 9, 2008

Parliamentary budget officer pegs cost per household at $1,500 by 2011 – but warns it could be higher

OTTAWA—The war in Afghanistan and its consequent rebuilding will cost Canadian taxpayers up to $18.1 billion — $1,500 for every household — by 2011, says Parliament’s budget officer.
Kevin Page’s report also says the cost could run even higher, while acknowledging that his forecast is only a rough estimate.

He said it’s impossible to come up with an accurate number because there are many variables and not all the government departments involved have provided enough information.

And Page warned in his report that the figures are so ill-defined that the war might threaten Ottawa’s balanced-budget projections over the long-term as projected surpluses get thinner.

“Budget transparency for parliamentarians and Canadians needs to be improved,” he told a news conference Thursday.

“When compared with international experience, Canada appears to lag behind the best practices of other jurisdictions in terms of the quality and frequency of war cost reporting to their respective legislatures.”

(more…)

Looks like I’m going to have to create a ‘nationalization’ tag if this keeps up. In the meantime, we have Centralization and Appropriation for those researchers interested in using the tag cloud in the left column of this site. Discuss the organization of the site’s news database in our forum.

Andrew Clark, The Guardian
October 09, 2008

Treasury secretary close to injecting public funds in return for equity holdings on Wall Street

The prospect of the American authorities following Britain’s lead by taking ownership stakes in top banks has done little to cheer Wall Street, with sickly US stocks slipping exactly a year after hitting their all-time high.

Officials say the US treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, is seriously considering a direct intervention to aid struggling institutions by pumping billions of dollars of capital into banks in return for equity stakes. [It's a business deal to merge the political and banking establishments. Like most statist interventions, it's spun as a way to create "strength", below. -Ed.]

Such a move would address fears that a $700bn (£407bn) government plan to buy banks’ distressed mortgage-related assets may not be enough to re-establish confidence and to get banks lending to each other once again.

Paulson alluded to the possibility at a press briefing yesterday without giving any details, saying that a bail-out bill approved by Congress provided “broad, flexible authorities” for his department to “inject capital” as well as to purchase banks’ troubled assets.

(more…)

Lindsay McIntosh, The Scotsman
October 9, 2008

IT WAS a day of desperate global action, unprecedented in both scale and cost, intended to stymie the international devastation being wrought by the financial crisis.

As the London stock market steeled itself to open again following days of vicious battering, Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, rose to stake the future of the country and the Cabinet on an audacious £500 billion banking bail-out.

And barely had the City begun to digest the hugely complex and unorthodox scheme when it was sent reeling again by an unscheduled interest rate cut – mirrored across the world – by the Monetary Policy Committee. It was the first such co-ordinated approach since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 – yet another indicator, had one been needed, of the gravity of the situation.

(more…)

Don’t mess with the globalists’ favourite PR event. You may end up looking down the barrel of a … tank?

Jeff Lee, Canwest News Service
October 09, 2008

VANCOUVER — Security forces are predicting protests will escalate as the 2010 Olympics approach and have mounted a number of “intelligence probes” to counteract threats.

The information is contained in heavily censored documents obtained by The Vancouver Sun from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP, the lead agency for the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit (ISU).

The “threat assessments” show police have identified several threats to Olympic security, including anti-globalization, anti-corporate and First Nations activists, as well as international extremist organizations such as al-Qaeda, which has already singled out the London 2012 Summer Games as a target.

(more…)