The Crash of 2008

Since last month's financial meltdown, 40 percent of stock value has vanished, almost $9-trillion. Some $5-trillion in real estate value has disappeared. A recession looms with sweeping layoffs, unemployment compensation surging, and social welfare benefits soaring. And America's first trillion-dollar deficit is at hand.
According to IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the crisis is the result of three failures: a regulatory and supervisory failure in advanced economies; a failure in risk management in private financial institutions; and also a failure in market discipline mechanism.
His prescription? More regulation and supervision of the financial sector and reform of the international financial architecture, the general idea being that unfettered capitalism inevitably generates unwanted outcomes and, in some cases, total disaster. It's a core Marxist theme, a staple of Keynesian economics, that permeates the work and thought of just about every economic school on the ideological spectrum.
"Bashing markets is fun, convenient and politically popular," wrote Financial Post columnist Terence Corcoran last month. "But it also takes a certain willful disregard of events and policy to reach the conclusion that capitalist failure brought the world economy to its knees. Only conscious effort and stubborn, even malicious, obtuseness could lead anyone to conclude that, on the basis of recent events, the sources of the financial meltdown are corporate, that big business made us do it. The role of bankers and other market players in causing the current crisis is undeniable, but it is limited compared with the massive role played by governments. From U.S. housing policies to financial regulators to central bank actions all over the world, the evidence is overwhelming that the causes of today's turmoil can be traced to massive government failure."
And the failure of policy is now being compounded. From the G7 to the G20, governments have been scrambling to push through measures and policies that cannot possibly have been thought through or properly evaluated. Bad interventions are inevitably being poured on to extinguish the fires created by previous bad interventions.
This raises questions about the wisdom of the Canadian federal government's plan to purchase $25-billion in insured mortgage pools to boost lending by the country's banks and reduce borrowing costs for Canadians.
In early October, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said the move was necessary to confront the global credit crisis, but is not a bail-out of the banks. He said the government will be purchasing "high quality assets," not the kind of toxic securities the U.S. government bought in its recent US$700-billion rescue package.
Flaherty said the government has acted responsibly to improve
credit conditions without putting Canadian taxpayers at risk. As of 2007, Canadians had $773-billion worth of mortgages outstanding.
He said Canada's financial system remains the strongest among leading industrialized nations, while the economy is expected to lead the Group of Seven in growth next year, albeit at a modest 1.2 percent rate. "It is important to underline that Canada's banks and other financial institutions are sound, well capitalized and less leveraged than their international peers," he said.
Yet if that is the case, why then was such a move necessary?

Where now?

Stephen Harper's Conservatives have once again been handed a minority government by Canadian voters, falling just 12 seats short of the hoped-for majority. While failing to achieve the holy grail of a majority, the Conservatives strengthened their hold on Parliament, gaining 16 seats, for a total of 143 of  308 seats.
The hapless Liberals suffered significantly at the ballot box, slipping 19 seats to end up with 76, while the NDP won 37 seats.
A modest alteration then in the make up of Parliament is the final result of an election which saw many Canadians complaining that the various parties either failed to offer any clear sense of how they differed from one another, or to provide a clear or remotely inspiring vision for Canada's future.
The ambivalent mood of Canadians towards the election was reflected in an historically low voter turnout, with only 59.1% ofÝeligible voters actually casting a vote, in a campaign where Party leaders steered clear of contentious social issues.
Social conservatives hoped that Harper had only been waiting for a Conservative majority before raising the abortion issue. But those hopes were decisively dashed when the PM, in the weeks leading up to the election, repeatedly stated his intention not to address abortion at any point in the future. He also made it clear he would not allow anyone else to do so either.
Despite predictions of a breakthrough, the Green Party garnered less than 7% of the vote and ended up with no seats. The Christian Heritage Party ran 59 candidates and received 26,722 votes in total ó its lowest total vote yet.
Which means that without socially conservative leadership at the top of any of the parties, life and family issues are likely to remain on the sidelines for the foreseeable future. Which will inevitably lead to a further plunge in respect for human life, as the abortion culture and all its related anti-life activities embeds ever deeper into Canadian culture.