Your daily supply of Canadian punditry, this time with more footnotes for Americans.
Ricky Leong reminds us that regardless of who wins this election and what policies are put into place, the energy economy will not suddenly change overnight. He rightly points out that the energy economy in Alberta is so large and unwieldly that any major policy will have two of the following properties to some degree -- slow, useless, or expensive.
The National Post, a great friend to Bay Street (Canada's version of Wall Street) has a great series of posts pandering to those who aren't being affected by the current recession. (Jonathan Chevreau, Terence Cocoran, and Peter Foster)
Jonathan Chevreau points out that you should buy, buy, buy stocks while they are cheap. Don't worry about the loss of a job, lack of food or having no roof over your head. Capitalism totally works!
Terence Cocoran stamps his feet and whines that people should stop saying we are going through a "d-word" (depression)! The fundamentals of the economy are great.
Peter Foster loves the market, and believes that oil companies poop milk, gold and lollipops. They would never do anything illegal, immoral, or wrong to increase their profit margins. They especially would never consider using a humanitarian disaster to gouge consumers at the pumps. So to all of you moms worried about affording the gas to take Billy to school, suck it up! It's only the market doing its job.
(As a note to the American readers, Ed Stelmach is the Conservative premier of Alberta)
Shorter Neil Waugh: "I wish Ed Stelmach would stop talking so openly about a Conservative majority. He's going to scare the Ontarians and Quebecers into actually thinking about who they are voting for when consider voting for Harper."
Martin Regg Cohn points out that compared to the US and Britain, we have one of the best leadership debate systems out there. He shows that the US system actively blocking any third party and the British don't even bother to do that (They just don't have debates). Compared to those systems, ours seems downright reasonable and democratic. It's a good thing the Canadian people stood up to Layton and Harper over their childishness over May.
Diane Francis is glad the US is not bailing out the big money gamblers on Wall Street anymore at the expense of taxpayers.
As James Grant, of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, said last year: "Capitalism without financial failure is not capitalism at all, but a kind of socialism for the rich." I would add that capitalism without referees or penalty boxes ruins the sport and that is what has happened to investment banking.
Don Martin points out that Dion still has a microcscopic chance of coming back and winning this election.
Crossposted at 1337hax0r.com