Well, here we are: the U.S. economy appears to be collapsing; thousands across the country are suddenly even more concerned about losing their jobs and houses, about paying for food and school; and countless cases of corruption, mismanagement and lobbying-gone-wrong are springing up left and right, all of which culminate in a massive cloud of disappointment, mistrust, and hopelessness. I am scared for the global economy, for the ramifications of yesterday’s largest fall in stock prices in history, for how this will affect the lives and livelihoods of persons across North America and the world. Beyond my fears over economic security, I am genuinely, utterly, and overwhelmingly mad. I am mad at the powers that be who allowed this to happen; I am mad that I will be affected by the stupidity, greed and short-sidedness of a handful of suits; and I am mad that those who will hurt most from this economic crisis will not be the ones that orchestrated the mess in the first place, but millions of middle and lower income people across the world. The situation at hand is demonstrative of both the gross inequality of our world today and the extreme problems that occur when the world’s economy is determined by a few countries wealth and interests, and a few people’s unintelligent and poorly made decisions.

The mortgage crisis is a crisis of inequality. In an ideal and simplistic world, the situation could look like this: U.S. mortgages were made cheaper because they were too expensive for the average person to buy; banks saw the potential for immense profits from lowering mortgage rates and allowing individuals to finance them; and therefore everyone wins. But in reality, it is problematic that mortgages needed to be lowered in the first place in order for your normal Joe Schmo to be able to own and home, demonstrating that most people who earn an average income having trouble making ends meet; and secondly it is problematic that banks—private institutions who’s primary goal is making profits—were responsible for such lowering. The U.S. government struck out in this situation, failing not only their own citizens but also hurting the world economy and the possibility of continuing their own legacy as global superpower. Strike 1: the U.S. government didn’t care for its own citizens, and didn’t respond to lack of home-owning by offering assistance in the form of government loans, increased social housing, or a recognition that perhaps the reason people couldn’t own homes was because they were focusing all their efforts on paying for education, food, health care, and all those other unfortunate, nit-picky costs that are required for living healthy lives. Strike 2: the government failed to stop an inevitable crisis, allowing for companies to profit from a weak, rampantly unruly structure, thus turning a blind eye to home-owners needs and instead looking at the increased millions of government cronies and friends. Strike 3: in allowing for such an economic scheme to be set up in the first place, and secondly neglecting to avert a crisis, Congress is now considering passing 700 billion USD (all following figures will be referred to in U.S. dollars) to save a floundering economy. If the government had any foresight—and if there was more accountability held over both its actions, as well as the actions of the private institutions at the centre of the mortgage crisis—such large spending could have been averted and the country’s finances used for hundreds of other projects.

The price is overwhelming to me: the U.S. has repeatedly cut funding to medical, housing and social programs, and it’s monetary (note: not military) foreign assistance is minimal compared to what it spends on the war in Iraq and, now, the could-be-averted-if-we-didn’t-have-our-heads-in-the-ground economic crisis. The country is spending an unnecessary $700 billion because of it’s own stupidity, greed, and lack of foreside. Yet although the country is considering floating this massive pile of change, the U.S. is stingy on matters of domestic and global inequality. Let’s look at where this $700 billion could go, if only the government, banks, and shareholders had put a cap in rampant excesses before the bubble burst. Let’s start with AIDS: UNAIDS estimates that the world needs $41 billion each year until 2010 to ensure that everyone worldwide has access to HIV/AIDS drugs, care, and treatment. The Bush administration has been hailed for authorizing up to $48 billion to fight HIV/AIDS over the period of five years, equaling approximately $9.6 billion a year. A global immunization campaign from 2006 to 2015 would cost a mere $35.5 billion, or $3.5 billion a year. While the U.S. rhetorically recognizes how important both of these efforts are, the country offers chump change and instead has spent approximately $1.2 trillion on the war in Iraq, and is now willing to spend $700 billion on another badly planned, debacherous mess that is the current market crisis.

Really now, how much more unequal can it get? U.S. home-owners get screwed over first by too-high mortgages on top of all other expenses necessary to live in the country; and secondly by poor economic management and greed. The world gets screwed over by more money being pumped into a sometimes failing and inherently unequal market system rather than money for education, housing, food, or health care. Essentially, this money is being spent to allow for this inequality to continue. I do not deny that at this point, a bailout is necessary. But it is utterly ridiculous, irresponsible and simply wrong that this situation was allowed to occur in the first place. The world will never come close to tackling inequality if such corruption, greed and multiple turning-of-eyes continues to occur. Let this be a sign not only of the dire situation of the U.S., but of where the country’s true interests lies, and how much money it really can and is willing to spend in order to solve problems; but only if those problems are of the few and not of the many, and only the problems that are created and affect those on top of the inequality throne.

   Tagged: Economy; stock market failure; U.S. government spending   

Notwithstanding Canadian pretensions to remain distinguished and distinct from America, we spend a lot of time worrying if our friends south of the border are paying attention to “our” issues, those policies that impact “our” economy and interests.

This opinion piece by the Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson and this recent CTV story on the U.S. Presidential race are case and point. Both story headlines ask: “Who would be best for Canada: McCain or Obama?” The maneuvering thereafter is familiar. The articles begin by noting how fond Canadians are of Democratic hopeful Barack Obama — usually measured by various opinion polls or the gushing of our politicians — and proceed to show the folly of that preference by lining up various “experts” who tell us that Democrats are more likely to support protectionism, erect barriers to trade, and beat up on the Canadian energy sector; these things will hurt us, the experts say.

My purpose here is not to debate the line taken by the Globe or CTV — who is better for Canada — but rather, ask if this is even a worthwhile question to pose given the current state of affairs in the United States: political uncertainty, economic upheaval and chaotic, complex and unpredictable foreign endeavours.

The anxiety at street level is, at times, palpable. Like many folks in New York City, this Canadian today watched in disbelief (glued to a closed captioned TV on my university campus with cadres of gathering of students) as the U.S. House of Representatives voted down the $700 billion bailout , causing a massive plunge in the stock market and increasing concerns about liquidity and credit for the broader U.S. economy.

And then there are serious political challenges. The next U.S. administration as noted by Fareed Zakaria will face challenges “unlike any in recent memory”: costly and complex military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; an unstable and fledgling new regime in Pakistan; and emerging concerns with increasingly defiant countries like Iran, Russia and Venezuela.

With all this said, I wonder if the Canadian punditocracy has gone astray in its preoccupation with the “who is better for us?” debate. Rather, we should be tackling a much more difficult challenge: how to ensure Canadian issues remain, even in a minimal sense, on the U.S. political radar in the months and years ahead. The climate in the United States is not one conducive to outward gaze, but self-reflection, examination and deep reform. Engaging American politicians on Canada-U.S. issues will be more difficult today than any time in decades.

Of course, I have no in-depth prescriptions at this time, but a modest proposal might be that lending a helping hand in these trying times, economically or politically, is a more effective strategy than asking the next President: so, what can you do for me?

   Tagged: canada, Canada-U.S., crises, economic, economy, financial, foreign policy, mccain, Obama, relations, uncertainty, who is better for canada?, world   

Once you’ve read Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”, you never look at the world the same ever again.

Every financial report is a barometer of corporate malfeasance. Every war is an opportunity for mercenaries and profiteers. Every political candidate is judged on his or her ties to big business and their willingness to put private profit above public interests.

It’s a strange, dark world replete with conspiracies and hidden agendas and naked greed, and yet it’s hard not to give some credence to Klein’s view of the role of hyper-capitalism in world events. Is it paranoia when they really are out to privatize the government?

Looking at the ongoing financial crisis in the U.S. through the lens of Klein’s thesis, the proposed bailout plan begins to resemble a sort of reverse-privatization. In the usual course of things (according to the Doctrine), neo-conservative governments tend to dismantle public institutions by selling off the profitable bits to private interests, leaving the public with the unprofitable dross which is inevitably discreditied as economically unviable, thus building public support for privatizing the rest.

One example would be the sale of Toronto’s 407 highway by the Harris government in 1999 - an arrangement where a foreign consortium collects the tolls on a highway originally built with taxpayer’s money, while the province continues to be financially responsible for its maintenance and safety. A more recent example is last year’s Chalk River fiasco, which was preceded by the partitioning of AECL’s profitable divisions in preparation for their sale.

With the current bailout proposal, we are looking at a unique reversal of this strategy. Instead of privatizing profit, the U.S. government would essentially be transferring bad private debt onto the public’s books, thus leaving Wall Street with the meat and the taxpayer with the gristle.

Whether this solution would ultimately be better or worse than the alternative (and there really doesn’t appear to be an alternative) is a separate issue for which I have no answers. However, analyzing the situation in terms of the interplay and conflict between profit and regulation, public and private interests might hopefully provide some insight into how all this will ultimately play out in our own economy and around the world.

In the meantime, here is Naomi Klein’s own take on the current crisis:

Now Is the Time to Resist Wall Street’s Shock Doctrine

   Tagged: economy, financial crisis, Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine   

Amid a swirl of candidate gaffes and platform shifts, this week in Canada’s federal election brought a Pandora’s box for the the Prime Minister which he opened: by seemingly denigrating the life and work of artists. Mr. Harper tied the arts to class, chiming that  when “ordinary Canadians come home, they turn on the T.V.” and don’t take kindly to subsidies for writers, artists, performers, and others in the creative arts.

The issue: a 45 million dollar budget cut to arts funding programs instigated across the country by the Conservatives last summer. Michel Rivard, one of Quebec’s most prominent musicians, launched a three-minute video on the internet sending up not just the stodginess of bureaucrats but the inability of such folks to “speaka another language.” Rivard acted the hapless artist appearing before a panel of grant adjudicators, all Anglophones. His slapstick play on the French word for “seal” - “phoque,” carried a slyly embedded call to arms to Quebec nationalists - a reminder to artists in that province about how the rest of Canada, particularly Anglo-Canada, “just doesn’t get it;” The “IT” being an almost sacrosanct linkage of culture with identity - the identity of what it means to belong to a group or even a nation.

Sure enough by mid-week, Rivard’s video, “Culture en peril/Culture in danger,” earned more than 500,000 hits on YouTube.  Canada’s literary icon Margaret Atwood entered the fray with an essay about the nature of culture and a country’s identity - she broadened the word “culture” to include crafts (knitting) and social recreation (not sure if “scrap-booking” was included, but why not?) as a pointed rejoinder to the PM’s jibe about rich folks attending galas. By Thursday evening, pundits pointed to a drop in the Tories’ poll numbers in la belle province.

Fascinating - the image all have evoked - from thousands of online commentators to the artists, including another Canadian Great, Gordon Pinsent, protesting Mr.Harper’s cuts, to the Prime Minister’s political rivals - that cultural activities, both “high (literary) and “low” (crafts) are processes by which identity is created. A concept worthy of discussion - it goes to the core of how we conceive of self and of nationhood.

In Europe, we have long seen this discourse. Indeed for most of the past century, the link between culture and a notion of “folk identity,” which always brings with it a shadow side, has figured prominently and appears to be on rise again, particularly in France.

If I write a novel, pen some lyrics, throw mud on a potter’s wheel, or like the fates, sit at a loom and weave a broadcloth, how is that linked to my identity?

   Tagged: artists, arts funding, Beau Dommages, canada, Canadian Politics, culture, Culture en Peril, Culture in Danger, federal election, identity, Margaret Atwood, Michel Rivard, Prime Minister Harper, Quebec   

Politics 2.0 empowers the masses to control policy from the comfort of their local wireless Internet café, but not without a few hitches…

The rising prominence of Blogs and social networking has created a paradigmatic shift in who can access the means to control the media. These mediums have allowed communities of interest to form and grow organically, because they enable an infinite number of individuals to convene on any given idea as a community, at an unprecedented low cost. It only follows that with the increased accessibility to the means of publishing production for the average citizen, the capacity for social networking will affect the way policy-makers do politics.

As the applications for controlling the flow of information have become more user-friendly over time, the cost of production has dropped exceptionally. It is to the point where someone could almost start a blog by accident on one of the larger applications such as Blogger. Facebook membership is a massive 40 million, of which Canada contributes an impressive 9 million profiles. The sheer efficiency of mass communication has increased along with the ease of participation, and suddenly, we are all the media.

The ease of participation is where the power of social networks is realized. If, for example, you believe that all salmon fry released from hatcheries into Canadian waters should be tattooed with tiny maple leaves on their dorsal fins in order to clearly distinguish their Canadian sovereignty to foreign fishing vessels, you have merely had a solitary whim. But there could possibly be others who share this belief with you, or would if they heard about such a great idea! These sympathetic souls may be strewn across the country, or even the world, but you can now be brought together over the new mediums to start planning strategy, recruiting followers and lobbying the DFO. Soon you will have a small but organized community to pitch ideas about how to make this inky salmon-sovereignty scheme a reality.

All absurdist examples aside, if only 0.001% of the country’s population thinks a particular policy needs attention, those people can find each other by the beacon-like tags of a blog or social networking group. In Canada that works out to 33,400 people, which though not a huge number, would certainly noticeable if it were a galvanized and organized group.

Consider that the leading online candidate has 13,400 Facebook “Friends.” You soon realize that a group of almost 300% the size of that “digital” constituency supports our speculative cause, and it begins to look like a vociferous and significant political will has emerged.

These gains could be challenged in the future, and that is why this election is such an important one for digitally-minded citizens. Some of the issues, one of the biggest in my opinion being net neutrality, cut right to the heart of the idea that communities could mobilize by affordably or freely commandeering the means of media. Unfortunately, digital issues are not on the table for the official debate. That is why now is the time to find out what your MP and party’s planned policies regarding digital rights are.

Get to know the issues of concerning digital rights, and ask about them at all-candidates meetings, debates and of course, on their Facebook accounts and party blogs. In the coming days and weeks I will write more about the digital issues that should be a part of the 2008 Canadian Election Debate.

   Tagged: 2008 Canadian Election, Communications Revolution, Debate, Digital Issues, Grassroots, Network Neutrality, Political Change, Social Networking