Mulcair's Thoughts Should Be Looked At:

Smoky Lake Signal Article No. 223 (May 30, 2012) Whispering in the Wind Is Canada Suffering From the “Dutch Disease”? The current hassle, between the Leader of the Official Opposition, Thomas Mulcair and the Prime Minister, relates to the NDP Leader’s suggestion that Canada is suffering from the so called “Dutch disease” ailment. (No, the “Dutch disease” is not a virus or a pandemic flue bug, it describes a set of economic circumstances that hit the Netherlands in the 1960s – at a time when the Netherlands was being blessed with major natural gas developments, a true resource windfall situation that caused the demise of the country’s manufacturing sector). Mr. Mulcair’s commentary compared the “Dutch disease” syndrome with what is happening in Ontario’s declining manufacturing sector while Alberta is booming with oil sands developments. For the moment political leaders throughout the country are doing a lot of name calling and offering unsubstantiated innuendos, some rightly coming from the western premiers. For me, I would like to see the Prime Minister review the merits of Mr. Mulcair’s arguments and look at ways to do some nation-building. As to Mr. Mulcair’s more abrasive attitude when it comes to dealing with national and at times, provincial issues, I think he might have learned a lesson when he recently observed to Parliament Hill reporters: “My debate is here in the House [of Commons].- My debate is with Stephen Harper.” Have Politicians and Economists Failed in Their Duties? I don’t think there is any argument to the contrary; the developed world is a much different place than it was just fifty years ago. The question then becomes; are our political leaders and their chief advisors (the economists) up to the task of governing or have they been virtually consumed by right wing, laissez-faire economics and the new realities of globalization? Said another way; have our politicians and their advisors become irrelevant to the workings of global commerce? The first indication of how inept traditional economists were and how they failed their political masters was the housing bubble in the United States (that was only five years ago) – it cost the US Treasury something like $900 billion to bail out the banks and confirmed the saying, some companies are just “too big to fail.” The current crisis in Europe is equally disturbing, equally dangerous and all the great political minds and all the great economists attached to the great political experiment don’t have a strategy or an answer to the crisis – some of those great minds are now saying that the European experiment has failed; it’s my view that what has failed is the globalization experiment and that is what has to be dismantled and substituted with another very dangerous experiment, nation-building and nationalism. Nonetheless, the next big test is going to be the commodity bubble that has already shown its head. Here we are going see another realization that traditional economists and political leaders aren’t up to their jobs. I would like to end this week’s incoherent, disjointed essay with a quote from the famous humorist Will Rogers: “If you inject truth into politics, you have no politics.”