statism watch

Just in case anyone’s fooled by this – capitalism and central planning are antithetical.

Jamie Smyth, The Irish Times
October 17, 2008

EU LEADERS will meet US president George Bush tomorrow near Washington to finalise plans to hold a summit of world leaders to reform the global financial system.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission president José Manuel Barroso want to win US backing for the plan, which the French leader said would launch a “refoundation of capitalism”.

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BBC News
October 17, 2008

Germany’s parliament has backed what has been billed as the largest financial rescue package in Germany’s post-war history.

German MPs backed the plan by an overwhelming majority

Up to 500bn euros ($670bn; £387bn) will be used to pour fresh money into banks and to guarantee loans between them.

The measures were passed overwhelmingly in the lower house and then unanimously in the upper house.

The plan was rushed through and is expected to be signed into law by the president later on Friday.

Germany’s Economy Minister Michael Glos said the move was crucial not just for the banks, but primarily for “the good of citizens and the economy”.

“Everything must be done to restore confidence” in the financial sector, he said.

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So, we know who the criminals are. What happens now?

Janet McFarland, Globe and Mail
October 17, 2008

Canadian brokerage firms did little to review asset-backed commercial paper products before selling them to retail investors, according to a report by Canada’s brokerage industry regulator.

The Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) reported yesterday on a year-long compliance sweep of firms involved in selling non-bank ABCP to Canadian investors, laying out new guidelines to change the way investment firms review products before selling them to clients.

“There was very little understanding, generally speaking, of what this product really was all about,” IIROC chief executive officer Susan Wolburgh Jenah said yesterday. She said brokerage firms reported they saw non-bank ABCP as little different from traditional commercial paper, even though IIROC concluded there were major risk differences.

The review concluded 76 per cent of the assets underlying non-bank ABCP were complex financial derivatives like synthetic collateralized debt obligations, whereas bank-sponsored ABCP had only three per cent of those types of derivatives and had 97 per cent traditional commercial paper assets like credit-card receivables. “The name asset-backed commercial paper was a misnomer. They were liability-backed,” Ms. Wolburgh Jenah said.

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So. Will this actually be ‘free trade’ this time around in the sense of laissez-faire Austrian economics,  or – as was indicated in the talk of ‘economic integration’ earlier this month – just more of the same that we got with NAFTA – reams of cronyism enshrined in legislation, protecting established business lobbies while exposing other markets to inequitable pressures? Neo-cons, central bankers, statist crooks the world over have done nothing but smear the ideal that capitalism (and indeed, classical liberalism) once was. The terms have become muddled and meaningless to the public, rendering dialogue nearly impossible.

CBC News
October 17, 2008

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has vowed to work toward a comprehensive economic agreement with the European Union, saying countries must avoid the tendency to “turn inward and erect barriers” in this time of economic turmoil.

Harper made the comment at a news conference in Quebec City Friday afternoon after meeting with Nicolas Sarkozy, French president and current head of the EU, and Jose Manuel Barroso, the head of the European Commission.

“Without question, these times call for closer economic co-operation among key players in the global economy,” Harper said.

“Among other things, this means rejecting the frequent tendency in difficult times to turn inward and erect barriers between our economies and our citizens,” he said. “Indeed, we must stand against protectionism and work to lower and eliminate barriers.”

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It’s interesting to discover that the RCMP has been caught staging attacks on energy companies in the past to fabricate evidence. They seem to have a history of this sort of thing. Time will tell if that is the case in this instance as well.

CBC News
October 17, 2008

The focus of an RCMP investigation into two explosions targeting deadly toxic sour gas pipelines in northern B.C. is now turning toward a small community southeast of Dawson Creek called Tomslake, near the location of the blasts.

The RCMP has scheduled a news conference Friday afternoon in Tomslake and officials are planning a town hall meeting for the evening to address residents’ concerns.

Officials with EnCana and police admit they can’t possibly patrol the vast network of pipelines snaking through the area’s rolling hills, but said they plan to outline in more detail what security measures are already in place.

The first explosion blew a 1.8-metre crater in the ground near a sour gas pipeline southeast of Dawson Creek sometime overnight Saturday. The second explosion blew a small leak in another sour gas pipeline 20 km away from the first, sometime overnight Wednesday.

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Martin Mittelstaedt, The Globe and Mail
October 17, 2008

The federal government has decided to add bisphenol A to the country’s list of toxic substances, a move that is likely to renew attention on the widespread use of the controversial chemical in almost all food cans sold in Canada.

The toxic determination, issued in Saturday’s Canada Gazette, makes Canada the first country to classify as risky bisphenol A, the chemical building block for polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins.

The government took the action based on worries that infants up to the age of 18 months might be inadvertently getting too much of the chemical, which mimics the hormone estrogen, from baby formula cans and plastic baby bottles, as well concerns that fish and other wildlife could be harmed from environmental exposure.

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