It ain't over

So now Harper thinks he can quell the Cold Cuts Scandal by ignoring it.
I don't think this will work. Because Canadians are going to keep dying.

You're doing a heck of a job, Henry and Bennie

As I suspected, the Bush administration is apparently now making a series of bad decisions about the market meltdown. Ian Welsh ennumerates:

The SEC is trying to decide if it should .. . . ban all short selling, period
This smells of panic driven decision making. Regulators are in a cold sweat, and they haven't thought this through. . . .
Getting rid of short selling entirely doesn't make market meltdowns less likely. It makes them more likely. Just as letting banks use depositor money to shore up investment banking subsidiaries is throwing good money, your money, after bad. Just as allowing banks to book "good will" as regulatory reserves doesn't actually change how likely they are to be insolvent. Regulators are making decisions in the grip of stark fear and their critical faculties aren't working anymore.

If Ian Welsh knows this, why don't the SEC braniacs know it?
And you know, when the people in charge keep coming up with instant "solutions" to the market panic, and those "solutions" actually make it easier to continue playing with somebody else's money, then I suspect that these aren't actually solutions at all, they're just somebody's pet project -- something that the banks and the Bushies had wanted to do anyway and with the panic they got their chance.

Saskatchewan mourns

The Little General is gone.

Na-na-na-na-na -- I can't hear you!

Gerry Ritz is Harper's problem, but our problem is a little broader than that -- can we trust the Canadian food we are buying?
The Conservatives seem to think that the way to deal with their food inspection responsibilities is to stick their fingers in their ears, shake their heads back and forth, and say "Na-na-na-na-na" as loudly as they can.
Scott directs us to a new Public Service Alliance website called Food Safety First which describes how the federal government is trying to make food safety problems disappear.
First, they're not actual creating or enforcing any actual safety regulations. No,no, that would be too much trouble, plus, of course, it would make the food industry mad, and the Harper Conservatives never want industry to be mad at them.
Instead, what they're doing is much easier, not to mention cheaper.
They're letting food plants inspect themselves, then not publishing the results! Simplicity itself!

The move toward industry self-policing has been done quietly by Ottawa politicians, bureaucrats and food company executives who fear news of the changes would spark a public backlash.
The spotlight of media attention fell on the government’s plans when a secret government document became public that outlines the government’s plans for the: "shift from full-time Canadian Food Inspection Agency meat inspection presence to an oversight role, allowing industry to implement food safety control programs and to manage key risks," and;"elimination of federal delivery of provincial meat inspection programs" in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia.
Meanwhile, Ottawa has quietly killed the publication of audit reports of Canadian meat processing facilities because of complaints from the industry that these reports caused the companies bad press.
Currently, the only source of independent information about safety in Canada meat processing industry comes from the United States. The US Department of Agriculture conducts an annual audit of Canada’s meat, poultry and egg products inspection system. The American audits, including plant visits, have revealed some shocking findings which were reported by the Globe and Mail.
The complete USDA audit is available here.

Steve at Far and Wide sums it up:

When Harper takes to the mic, and defends Ritz, saying he is doing a good job on the file, and that's all that matters, the follow up question should ask about that JOB. Why are you putting the onus on companies to self-police, when their chief concern is profit, sometimes at the expense of public safety? Why are you CUTTING inspection? Canadians need to understand that this government is putting public health at risk because of ideological considerations. The Conservative policies are the bad joke here.

Wall and Harper

Well, I see Chester is still BFF with Spike .
And its sort of humorous, actually, because if Canadians listened to Wall and actually came to believe that Dion's Green Shift is the modern version of Trudeau's National Energy Program, then Dion's popularity in Ontario and Quebec would immediately shoot upwards . . .

No how, no way, no catfight

This was a smart move on Clinton's part -- Clinton avoids Palin faceoff.
Just as Obama avoided raising McCain's profile by appearing with him in townhall meetings, so Clinton avoided a meaningless media circus which would have become a major distraction from the actual presidential campaign.

Mulroney Lite

As Allison points out, Harper says those mean old other "bunch of parties" want to "sabotage" his government because they "don't want our economy to be successful". As if he knew how to do that!
Frances Russell compares Harper to Mulroney -- both turned out to be fiscal disasters:

In less than three years, Harper has squandered a balanced budget and fiscal surplus that Canadians shredded much of their social safety net to achieve.
. . . Last month, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development reported that Canada is slated for the second weakest economic growth among the major industrialized countries -- the worst performance since the last time the Conservatives were in office.
Harper is following Brian Mulroney's footsteps. Between 1984 and 1993, Mulroney ran up nearly two-thirds of the more than half-trillion-dollar national debt accumulated in Canada since Confederation. In his last year in office, his government posted a $42-billion deficit and a half-trillion-dollar national debt.
. . . Canadians need to ask how bad it could get under a second Harper regime . . .
It's unbelievable that the very ideology responsible for the fiscal and financial meltdown is now being marketed as best positioned to address it.

This echoes the Gazetteer's perceptive comment on Sunday.
And the peasants are burying their gold.

Canadians are dying so why not crack a few jokes?

Can I get sued for wondering what Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz was smoking on that Sunday morning two weeks ago, when he decided that the civil servants and scientists discussing the deaths of Canadians due to listeria needed to hear him crack a few jokes:

Sources who took notes during the call said Ritz fretted about the political dangers of the crisis, before quipping:
"This is like a death by a thousand cuts. Or should I say cold cuts."
The disease was linked to cold cuts from Maple Leaf Meats.
And when told about a new death in Prince Edward Island, Ritz said:
"Please tell me it's (Liberal MP) Wayne Easter."
Easter is the Liberal critic shadowing Ritz's Agriculture Department.
...The conversation on Aug. 30 began with talk of the mounting death toll and trends in the spread of the disease.
Sources say Ritz began the call by asking: "Are there any more bombs out there?" - implying any politically damaging news.
But discussion soon shifted to communications and how best to frame the government's message.

So I see he's got the government's priorities front and centre.
The Canadian press story also says

Ritz was not the only cabinet minister to quip about the food crisis.

But they didn't say who the others were, and I guess its up to us to figure out what is wrong with these people.

UPDATE: Oh, yes, it was the Health minister.

What will China do?

Ian Welsh looks east:

China holds a ton of mortgage backed securities. AIG insures many of them. Freddie and Fannie guarantee many of them. Failing to bail those firms out, failing to guarantee that paper, meant that China would be stuck with cents on the dollar. And after taking a loss like that, they might not be willing to keep extending the US what amounts to loans. And if that happens, the dollar crashes, or interest rates have to go through the roof.
And that's the barrel of the gun that Bernanke and Paulson are looking down.

Fire department vs bucket brigade

Atrios, who is an economist, provides an excellent analogy:

. . . I have no idea if this bailout was a good thing or a bad thing. I don't have enough information to make that determination.
The real issue is that you need a sensible regulatory framework to prevent financial crises from happening in the first place, and criteria and practices for dealing with them when they do, along with a sensible and consistent broad social safety net for individuals and families for when crises happen to them.
It might have been the right thing to run down to the river with buckets to collect water to throw on the burning building, but it would have been much better to have better fire codes and a functioning fire department.

Me, I would prefer fire codes and a fire department.

Cheer up!

My new favorite blog, Calculated Risk sums up the financial news:

With the DOW off over 500 points yesterday, Lehman in bankruptcy, the Fed rescuing A.I.G. tonight, the viability of WaMu and others institutions in doubt, Fannie and Freddie placed in conservatorship, a major money market fund halting redemptions, it might seem like the credit crisis is spiraling out of control.
And there are definitely more problems to come.
Many banks will fail - especially small and regional banks with excessive concentrations in construction & development (C&D) and commercial real estate (CRE) loans. And the recession is getting worse with rising unemployment, declining personal consumption expenditures, declining industrial production and falling business investment. Economies of many other countries are in or close to recession. The Fed even cautioned on slowing U.S. exports today for the first time.
Foreign stock markets are crashing: the Russian stock market was halted today after declining 17%. The Shanghai composite index is off about 2/3 from the peak.

But even after all that, CR concludes

...unlike observers that believe this only marks the end of the beginning, I believe there is a chance that these events mark the beginning of the end of the crisis.

OK, works for me.

Great line of the day

From Stephane Dion:

Mr. Harper, he speaks better English than me, OK. But I speak the truth better than him in English and in French

Why would the Bush administration be right this time?

Business writer Joe Nocera at the New York Times looks on the bright side, sort of:

With the government refusing to prop up Wall Street anymore, maybe now mortgage-backed derivatives will find their natural bottom. Something to look forward to, I guess.

The thing that worries me is this -- if there is one thing the last eight years has taught us, it is that the Bush administration is just about always wrong about just about everything.
So why would they be right about how they are handling the market meltdown?

Great line of the day

Over at Dawg's Blawg, Marie Eve contrasts Harper's $19 billion spending extravaganza with his recent statement about the importance of fiscal prudence, and concludes:

If Harper keeps spinning at that rate, by October 14th he should have spun a hole for himself all the way to China.

Not helpful

Cue the trolls, just as Dion starts to trend upward. But trolls are so cute, aren't they, especially the ones who are pretending to be Liberals.