Friday, November 28, 2008

Neo-Con Industrial Strategy.

The Federal Conservatives have a plan to help with the labour shortage in Alberta......mass unemployment in the rest of Canada forcing workers to move to Alberta. As a result of this mass unemployment labour rates will decline making it cheaper to build all those upgraders now on hold. Call it a ne0-con industrial strategy.
Link
Unemployment to rise in 2009, Flaherty predicts
Unemployment is slated to rise to 6.9 per cent next year. While that's still far below the 13 per cent jobless rate in the early 1980s recession and 10 per cent in 1991-93, it will still mean hardships as thousands of jobs are shed in manufacturing, energy, mining and other sectorsFlaherty predicted the jobless rate will rise to 6.9 per cent in 2009 from 6.2 per cent now, but Porter predicted it could creep up to 7.5 per cent by the end of 2009 – with a loss of 50,000 jobs for the year.
As the unemployment rate rises, "you'll begin to see some of the steam come out of wages as the labour market loosens up," Porter said. Bruce Cran at the Consumers' Association of Canada said consumers are more pessimistic than Ottawa and are reacting by cutting their spending "From what we're hearing, it seems the government's a step or two behind the reality of what people are thinking."


Boy you can say that again, they have no plan...because having a plan well that would mean well a 'planned economy'....an anathema to neo-cons. So what do they offer us instead why the solution that got us in this mess in the first place back in the bad old days of the ninties. A made in Alberta solution that we saw under Ralph Klein. And he had no plan either except slash and burn.

Flaherty's instinct to cut out of step with world
As the rapidly worsening global recession pushes governments around the world to step up spending, Ottawa's first official response is to cut back. The fiscal update presented yesterday by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will suck $6-billion out of the economy next year. But it will show the slimmest of budget surpluses, even as his own figures show Canada has slipped into recession. By cutting government spending, limiting its transfers to the provinces and padding its revenues by charging commercial banks to partake in money-market measures, Mr. Flaherty said he will narrowly avoid a deficit. But his moves are exactly the opposite of what many economists recommend in times of recession. Government spending should not be contracting when the economy could use a boost, they argue. In most other developed countries, governments are ramping up multibillion-dollar programs ranging from infrastructure spending to food stamps for the poor.

Progressive economists who have been calling for large stimulus spending reacted angrily yesterday to Ottawa's fiscal update, arguing the government used it to deliver an assault on democratic freedoms, gender, minority and labour rights in Canada."This is class and gender warfare," said economist Robert Chernomas, from the University of Manitoba. "This is the type of economic policy agenda Sarah Palin would have delivered had she been elected president in the U.S." Chernomas is among 88 Canadian economists, sociologists and political scientists who appealed for a stimulus package for the failing economy in a letter last month to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.Members of the Progressive Economic Forum, they oppose the brand of neo-liberal "laissez-faire" capitalism – the markets know best – in vogue until the recent global meltdown.Several economists interviewed yesterday by the Toronto Star said Finance Minister Jim Flaherty let down Canadians by playing politics in time of crisis. They said he failed to offer measures to save jobs or stimulate the economy, despite agreement to do so among the G20 nations – including Canada – at a recent emergency meeting in Washington.

Of course a capitalist goverment has no plan because neither do the capitalists.....

"There is what I believe is somewhat of a perfect storm coming at us," says Liz Wright, practice leader at Watson Wyatt consultancy's Human Capital Group in Toronto.
"We have both recessionary pressures and a talent shortage" that combined, will require a thoughtful approach to instituting cost-saving measures, she says.
The consultancy conducted its annual survey of workplaces in Canada earlier this year to determine companies' preparedness for an economic downturn and workforce preservation.
While the survey won't be released until next month, Ms. Wright says it found 60% of companies surveyed have contingency plans that include layoffs in the event of a recession.
"Some of the top areas they've identified in their plans are organizational restructuring, layoffs, hiring freezes and a slowing rate of salary increases," she says.
However, the survey, titled the 2008-2009 Global Strategic Rewards Report also found more than half of Canadian companies do not effectively undertake workforce planning.
"They don't really understand what their business needs are in terms of the workforce," Ms. Wright says. "Roughly 30% to 40% are conducting an analysis of some sort but the rest aren't."


SEE:
Economics 101
Neo-Cons Have No New Ideas

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Too Little Too Late

Here is a lesson about the importance of dealing with climate change NOW. Under our so called Green PM; Brian Mulroney, a North American agreement on acid rain was signed. Unfortunately it now seems it was too little too late. As will be the reluctant changes capitalism will make in order to offset the current climate crisis.

Scientists say they have found lakes in Canada that are losing some of the calcium dissolved in their waters, a condition they're likening to an aquatic version of osteoporosis.
The drop in calcium levels is being attributed to the effects of acid rain and logging, which together have depleted the element in the soil around lakes, reducing the amount that is in runoff and available for aquatic life.

Under previously implemented pollution-control plans, emissions of sulphur dioxide in Eastern Canada fell by 63 per cent from 1980 to 2001, according to Environment Canada figures. As a consequence, acidity in many lakes has dropped to more normal readings, but the new findings suggests that even this massive emissions cut hasn't been enough to fully mitigate the damage from acid rain. The researchers believe the sharp drop in calcium has been under way for decades, and began in some areas as early as the 1970s.
When acid rain falls on soil, it quickly leaches out the calcium, and eventually exhausts the dirt's stores of the element, leaving little available to be washed into lakes. In the initial period of acid rain deposition, this effect temporarily increases the amount of calcium entering the lakes, but once the stores of the element are depleted, levels plunge.
Logging is also a problem because trees contain calcium they draw from the soil. When trees are cut and removed, their calcium is taken from the ecosystem. The calcium in uncut forests is returned to the soil when trees fall and decay.


Mulroney's regime demonstrated environmental rhetoric but with questionable consequences and little follow-up actions.In 1988, the Mulroney government was involved in the "Changing Atmosphere Conference" in Toronto, where government, industry, academics and NGOs exclaimed the following:"Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequence could be second only to a global nuclear war. The Earth's atmosphere is being changed at an unprecedented rate by pollutants resulting from depositions of hazardous, toxic and atomic wastes and from wasteful fossil fuel use ... These changes represent a major threat to international security and are already having harmful consequences over many parts of the globe.... it is imperative to act now, (Climate Change in the Conference statement, Changing Atmosphere Conference in 1988).Even after this deep concern was expressed, Mulroney did not begin to act.In June 1992, Mulroney signed the Framework Convention on Climate Change Convention, ratified the Convention in December 1992, and then proceeded to ignore the obligations incurred under the Convention and to never enact the necessary legislation to ensure compliance.The Mulroney government incurred obligations, not only under the Framework Convention on Climate Change, but also under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

SEE:
The Tories Acid Rain Solution
Industrial Ecology
Capitalism Is Not Sustainable
The Carbon Market Myth
Saving Capitalism From Itself
Groupthink
Green Capitalism
Climate Catastrophe In Ten Years

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Capital Offers No Solution To It's Own Crisis

Capital's crisis is now fully public..
.Only twice in the past has the business confidence index been lower - in the third quarter of 2001 - during the bursting of the tech-bubble - and during the 1990-91 period, when a recession battered the real estate, financial and retail sectors.
"In both cases, the drops were followed by contracting business capital investment," the Conference Board said in a release.
Capital spending is a major engine of economic growth, combining with consumer and government spending and exports as the main pillars of the economy. Weak capital spending, at a time of falling consumer confidence and government cuts, will put a squeeze on growth.
The Conference Board said "the latest survey, conducted during the first three weeks of October, as mayhem gripped global financial markets, found businesses were "much more concerned" about the economy and their future financial situations than in the previous poll, taken during the summer.
Nearly 70 per cent of businesses responding to the survey believed that the economy would be in worse shape in six months - compared with 12 per cent who expected an improvement.
The net result of that negative view is that only 25.8 per cent of the business leaders surveyed believe now is a good time to make new investments in plants, technology and equipment, the board said.

And it is having a Flashback....

Hedge fund industry enters time-warp in January 1970, pops out virtually unchanged in 2008

Thought recent develops in the hedge fund industry such as poor performance, SEC registration, and taxation were unprecedented? Yeah, so did we - until Nicholas Motson of the Cass Business School (see related post), gave us a heads-up about a fascinating article from the January 1970 issue of FORTUNE magazine. The entire article can be downloaded here on the A.W. Jones & Co. website (yes, that A.W. Jones - the father of the hedge fund industry).
As you will see, the similarities between the hedge fund world of 1970 and that of 2008 and truly amazing - almost eerie in fact. Even the 39 year old Warren Buffett makes a cameo in this piece. As Motson pointed out to us, “…if you re-scale the numbers it could have been printed yesterday.”
The bizarre parallels begin with the article’s very title: “Hard Times Come to Hedge Funds“. It goes on to chronicle the travails of the $1 billion industry (as a point of reference, the US mutual fund sector managed about $50 billion at the time). FORTUNE estimated there were 3,000 investors in about 150 hedge funds by 1970. Most funds were launched between 1966 and 1970 and “the great bulk” were registered in Manhattan (that’s just south of Greenwich, for those who may not remember the old days).


Speaking of flashbacks the solution to this crisis is a New Regina Manifesto for the 21st Century.....

Public reading marks 75th anniversary of Regina Manifesto
'No CCF Government will rest content until it has eradicated capitalism.'
Ottawa (19 Aug. 2008) - Seventy-five years ago this summer, the Regina Manifesto was adopted at the first national convention of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in Regina. The 4,300-word declaration laid out a socialist vision for the country and has influenced the Canadian left ever since. To this day the document remains an emotional symbol for the New Democratic Party (NDP) – which replaced the CCF in 1961 – even though it includes a utopian declaration that no socialist today expects ever to be realized


The former based upon Fabian Social Democratic tradiditons looked to the State and in particular its economists to deal with the crisis of capital during the Great Depression. As such capital was lost, in the collapse of the stock market. Today the same Great Crisis is occuring but what is obvious is that all socialization of capital can be accomplished without the State and centralized planning; rather through public ownership through workers control, a phenomenon denied by the CCF as implausable, impossible, and associated with the 'Imposibilists" of the Socialist Party of Canada.

Today we have the opportunity to mobilise the mass of social capital, the wealth created by workers through the production of surplus value, as well as through workers investments; their pension plans, RRSP's and investments. Share Capital, that the Wall Street pundits proclaim was the new capitalism, was in fact the expansion of the recognition that all capital is the result of creation of the proletariat.

That is when the casino market of investments and movement of fictional captial; finance captial, collapses all that is left to retrieve capital is real prudction; factories and workers. In other words all capital is actually based on two contradictory sources; inheritence, the dead capital of previous generations of workers, and productive capital; living workers and the means of production.

The hedge funds and private capital investors who dominate the financial markets are based upon the former as George Soros ,himself a benfificary of the fictive capita of hedge funds,l takes pains to point out, the obvious, that without real capital; living workers and factories, all other capital is whiffenpoof.

And credit is the ultimate in dead capital, its only real is when it is spent by living workers through consumption and investment. Otherwise it is merely caluculations made by computers being used by international speculators. The use of 'creative' accounting practices by capitalists allows them to discount their losses over a period, to make them disappear, which has led us to this crisis. The real effect of these practices is to create actual unemployment of workers the very source of all capital.

While it may appear counterintuitive the practice worked for a decade as investors shored up companies that cutback workers, however in this crisis it is the reverse that is now required. Investment to be successful must create jobs such as in infrastructure. And the greatest source of capital remains living workers, both their labour to produce value and the capital they have created in pension funds, mortgages, RRSPs, savings accounts and government bonds. Its as clears as the nose on your face. The credit/capital crisis is the fact that Americans and Canadians have no savings, rather they are overextended on credit, they are in debt, so their nations are in debt. Laying off workers only worsens the crisis, since they now become permanent debtors.

Public ownership, the socialization of all capital under worker and community control, the creation of workers cooperatives as an alternative to corporations, and by extension the creation of peoples banks; credit unions under workers control, is the elephant in the room, that so terrifies the captialist class who keep telling us this meltdown is not the end of capitalism as we know it. Though it should be.



SEE:

There Is An Alternative To Capitalism

Business Unionism Offers No Solution To Capitalist Crisis

Auto Solution II

Super Bubble Burst

Your Pension Plan At Work

Gambling On Your Future

The End Of The Leisure Society

It's the Labour Theory of Value, stupid

Workers Control vs Corporate Welfare

NDP And Workers Control

A Peoples Program for Alberta

Left, Right and Liberty

State-less Socialism


Cooperative Commonwealth=Free Market

Not Your Usual Left Wing Rant

Populism and Producerism

THE BRITISH DISTRIBUTIONISTS

Historical Memory on the Eve of the Election

Calgary Herald Remembers R.B. Bennett

Social Credit And Western Canadian Radicalism




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