My little bro, Matt, has finally started to put some of his insights out into the public domain and has started his blog - the MKBraaten Project. He's suddenly a huge fan of Modest Mouse and talks them up like they were going to save the world fromt he moral vaccuum created by the Pope's certain demise.
Matt makes some claims in his post on Paul Martin's recent love-in with G. Bush and V. Foxe down in Waco, Texas, particularly that "[w]e are essentially sacrificing our liberties so that Americans can be safe". I concur.
PMPM is a master of the smoke-and-mirrors game of manipulating public opinion. He first built up all this political capital by pretending to stand up to Washington's plan for Missile Defence and then he sells Canada out while down in Waco. A bunch of whack-nuts have come up with this idea called the "Task Force on the Future of North America" and claim that the path to Canada's prosperity lies in deeper integration with the US. I think it's insane.
It's insane because it is advocating that Canada partner up with an empire in decline. I love the USA and think that a lot of good sincere Americans are wondering wtf is wrong with the direction this country is taking the world. The US is racking up huge deficits and debts and these must be repaid. It's by design.
The only reason the US can wage wars all over the world is because it is able to sell its debt abroad. In fact, it's the only thing the US exports besides dollars. The US just prints those dollars and buys up the goods that other nations actually produce. These nations can hold onto the dollar as a reserve currency and watch their reserves devalue through inflation, or they can buy the #1 US export: debt. By buying debt, the banking sector is actually able to earn some sort of return, and the US can just roll it over in a never-ending Ponzi scheme. At some point though, the banks in Eurpoe and Japan will begin to question the ability of the US to meet its debt requirements and may require a risk premium in the form of a higher interest rate. That's bad news for Americans who are already over their heads in credit debt.
The US debt is a beast that needs to be tamed. Canada has done an okay job, but once the effects of this debt start to be felt in the real economy, we're gonna suffer. As Trudeau said, when the US coughs, we get the flu.
