statism watch

Jeff Gray, The Globe and Mail
December 22, 2008

Just as Toronto’s below-the-radar dialogue over road tolls starts to show signs of moving beyond guaranteed-death-wish status for politicians, a likely recession arrives and threatens to put that progress into reverse.

Tolls, or “road pricing” as the experts call it, will always make politicians itchy. Metrolinx, the province’s Toronto-area transportation planning body, put off bringing up tolls to pay for its $50-billion master plan until 2013, although its board of local politicians now wants to start a “conversation” on the concept and other ideas such as special parking taxes.

But European road-pricing experts at a recent Toronto conference – sponsored by Transport Canada but then disavowed by the minister the next day – suggested some new ways to convince wary citizens of the merits of tackling traffic congestion with a pay-as-you-drive toll plan.

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Tony Van Alphen, Toronto Star
December 22, 2008

The Canadian Automotive Museum: Future home of the industry?

Canadian taxpayers could soon be shareholders in sputtering General Motors and Chrysler.

The federal and Ontario governments will receive warrants that give them the right to buy non-voting stock in the country’s two biggest automakers as a condition of providing $4 billion worth of public loans.

The warrants will entitle the governments to buy about 20 per cent of the value of the loans, or $800 million, worth of shares of the two companies.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty announced the historic rescue package on Saturday, but the warrant provision received little attention.

Federal and Ontario officials could not comment or offer more details on the provision, which the governments disclosed in a background document under the heading “security.”

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What’s your best guess as to where the $8.5 Trillion (Bloomberg – and that figure is now weeks old) bailout in the US has gone?

Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press
December 22, 2008

WASHINGTON—It’s something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where’s the money going?

But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation’s largest banks say they can’t track exactly how they’re spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.

“We’ve lent some of it. We’ve not lent some of it. We’ve not given any accounting of, ‘Here’s how we’re doing it,’” said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion (U.S.) in emergency bailout money. “We have not disclosed that to the public. We’re declining to.”

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