Some people say dumb things
Yesterday I delivered a load of hazardous waste to an out of Town Company and in the course of conversation I asked if they were busy, "Yes and No. The recycling is doing well but the transportation side isn't."
"How many drivers do you have out today?" I asked. "Twelve but normally it would be thirty five". When a local gravel hauling company tells me that the plans are made for the year and nobody else is being hired (and gravel moves first in the construction season) you know that the economy is knackered.
So where does the Governor of the Bank of Canada get off by proclaiming, at a nationally televised news conference that the recession is over? Tell that to the thousands of EI exhaustees who will flood the economy in the next three months. Tell that to the bankruptees who have held on waiting for stimulus money, tell that to the local bridge builders who are not working on the Burnham St. bridge because a company from Newfoundland is. It doesn't make sense!
"How many drivers do you have out today?" I asked. "Twelve but normally it would be thirty five". When a local gravel hauling company tells me that the plans are made for the year and nobody else is being hired (and gravel moves first in the construction season) you know that the economy is knackered.
So where does the Governor of the Bank of Canada get off by proclaiming, at a nationally televised news conference that the recession is over? Tell that to the thousands of EI exhaustees who will flood the economy in the next three months. Tell that to the bankruptees who have held on waiting for stimulus money, tell that to the local bridge builders who are not working on the Burnham St. bridge because a company from Newfoundland is. It doesn't make sense!
8 comments:
Trudeau told anyone willing to hear, way back when, that we need to deal with " rising expectations ". Well, it seems events have passed us by. As a Western democratic, industrial society, the consumer merry-go-around is grinding to a halt. And, to compound the misery, the nascent Buy America culture is forcing small manufacturing companies to set up shop in an American state in order to do business with traditional customers. A " Buy and vacation locally " credo, may be very good for your health. Funny how things turn out.
"tell that to the local bridge builders who are not working on the Burnham St. bridge because a company from Newfoundland is. It doesn't make sense!"
Before that last comment can be supported, we have to know why this is the situation. Do we know why? Without that, we can only assume that 'free market' forces are the reason, and that has to make sense for everything else in our business philosophies to also make sense, including the right of labour to choose their own rules.
I had noticed that pronouncement myself and wondered what the Bank guy has been smoking. It seems obvious to everybody but him and Harper that this economic ship is continuing to sink bit by agonizing bit.
Every day you can gather several media accounts that together prove this to be true. In Toronto I was struck by the blank walls of the subway stations and cars. They used to be full of advertisements, now they are mostly empty and in the stations, the walls painted black.
Airlines, already losing money, are offering seat sales of 40 to 50percent off. Hotel rooms are empty and artists are offering cheap concert tickets to make it worthwhile to go on the road.
Locally it seems the only businesses opening now are the consignment shops, money marts, and dollar stores.
And as Ben pointed out, thousands of people will have their EI run out soon, and the only place to go after that is the welfare office, where the hapless property tax payor is on the hook whether they can afford to pay their own taxes or not.
But hey, it's summertime and the living is easy, right? Have another beer and forget it until it hits your family. Then it will suddenly be all too real.
It's been real for me for the past year now
It's been real for plenty of us, it's people like the Governor of the Bank of Canada along with his masters Harper and Flaherty who don't have a very firm grasp on reality.
They think if we all pretend hard enough for long enough our wishes for prosperity will magically come true. I think they call it having consumer confidence.
It's the same sort of magical thinking that convinces people we'll dream up abundant new sources of clean energy in lots of time before we run out of oil and natural gas. Delusional all.
The economists among us may say that the beginnings and endings of recessions are signalled by one or another economic indicator, which measures the performance of our economy in the aggregate. As usual, the devil is in the details.
The column by Thomas Walkom in today's Star effectively deconstructs the Bank of Canada statement.
For those who prefer the abridged version, the cartoon in the Star sums it up nicely.
Thanks for the link Bill, I had managed to miss Walkom yesterday. Just getting used to reading my Saturday Star online instead of on paper, and I can't say it is entirely satisfactory, I keep missing things.
And then there's the guilt of cancelling my subscription and personally aiding and abetting in the death of print media. It's awful. But it saves me twelve bucks a month, and I'm not killing all those trees, so am hoping it is not an act that will keep me out of heaven when the time comes.
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