This is from James Laxer's blog. Flaherty is a great purveyor of flatulence. His pompous hot air may have some minor effects but as Laxer says it doesn't really propel prices downward.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
In Bishop’s Robes, Jim Flaherty Meets the Retailers
At a highly publicized meeting on Parliament Hill today, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will exhort the nation’s retailers to bring prices into line with the stronger value of the Canadian dollar. The gathering bears a strong resemblance to a conclave of medieval warlords with the local bishop. From time to time the bishop would meet with knights, lords, knaves and other grandees to urge a little Christian charity on them.
Keep the pillaging, looting, mayhem, and theft from the local peasants to a minimum he would urge. Not only would this win points for them with the Almighty, it would do much to prevent the peasants from revolting. And the peasants are always revolting, he might add.
Naturally those present at the gathering understood that the bishop would take no earthly action to ensure compliance with his stated wishes. Moral suasion was the name of the game.
When Jim Flaherty meets with the Retail Council, Walmart and all the other marts, he is there to urge them to do the right thing. They should give Canadian consumers true value for their puissant loonies.
Like the medieval bishop, Flaherty is a man a principle, of fixed principles. He believes in the celestial workings of the unregulated market. Let the forces of supply and demand, of wages and profits operate like a finely tuned timepiece and all will be well. There will be no legislation to require retailers to treat Canadians fairly when they purchase automobiles, books, household appliances and clothing, the finance minister has already said.
Why bother to hold the meeting at all if Flaherty plans to take no action to ensure that Canadians get fairness?
As a man of his creed, the finance minister believes that words from the pulpit can have an effect. For their part, the retailers are grumbling. They don’t want to be seen at a confessional where they are cast in the role of the sinners. The price gap between Canada and the U.S. is someone else’s fault, they insist. Blame the manufacturers, the distributors, labour and the geography of Canada, just don’t blame them.
At the conclave, Flaherty will be sure to explain to the retailers that spending an hour or two wearing a hair shirt in a his presence and perhaps conceding a few alms to consumers is better than the alternative: a meeting at a future date with a political leader who might actually do something.
Showing posts with label James Flaherty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Flaherty. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Monday, September 3, 2007
Jim Flaherty: The Auto Workers' Free Market Friend
This is from James Laxer's blog.
Ed Broadbent's old stomping ground is going to the dogs, that is the Conservatives, the running dogs of the US imperialists as the old Maoists would say. However, Canada is valuable mainly as a source of natural resources such as oil, gas, wood, and minerals. As long as we continue to supply the US with those and help its energy security by developing the oil sands everything is OK. The workers at the GM plant in Oshawa elected a Conservative. I wonder if this will have any effect on their voting patterns.
Jim Flaherty: The Auto Workers’ free-market friend in Ottawa
G M’s announcement last week that it will cut 1200 jobs at an Oshawa, Ontario truck plant is the latest signal that the nation’s manufacturing sector is in deep trouble.
CAW economist Jim Stanford told the Toronto Star that “economic research over the years has shown that the spinoff effects in total add up to about 7.5 jobs” for every automobile job that is eliminated. The effect, therefore, of the GM job cuts will be the loss of about eight thousand jobs in a host of companies that supply the Oshawa truck plant as well as in local restaurants, building businesses and a variety of service industries. Many of the lost jobs in the auto parts sector will be south of the border in American plants that supply the truck plant.
Manufacturing layoffs are becoming an ever more common occurrence in Ontario, as core industrial employment is cut back, and the nation’s heavy industries are hollowed out.
Because the overall economic health of the country appears relatively robust, the growing crisis in the auto sector and in manufacturing as a whole has been masked.
Since the late 1990s, about 10,000 auto assembly jobs have been lost in Canada and over the past six years, 13,000 jobs have been cut in the auto parts sector. This year in addition to the General Motors jobs cuts, Chrysler has decided to eliminate 2000 jobs in Ontario.
One might expect that Jim Flaherty, Canada’s Finance Minister, who represents the riding of Whitby-Oshawa, where many of the workers who are about to lose their livelihoods reside, would be working overtime to save auto jobs.
On the contrary, he seems philosophical, content with the stance his government is taking. He told a reporter that he was “concerned” about the GM announcement and mentioned his recent budget’s faster write-offs for capital investments in machinery and equipment for manufacturers as evidence that the government is doing a lot for the auto industry.
At a time when the effects of the rapid surge in the value of the Canadian dollar and the slowdown in US auto sales are combining to threaten thousands more auto jobs, Flaherty’s faster write offs will be about as effective as a finger in a dike during a storm surge. Everybody knows that in a slowing market faster write offs don’t generate additional capital investment.
Flaherty is, and always has been, a staunch right-wing conservative, proud of never having interfered with the celestial functioning of free markets. That’s why he can be philosophical about the loss of good jobs in his riding. “People who have been losing jobs have been getting other jobs,” he noted.
He makes it seem so easy. What alternative jobs will those who are laid off be getting and for what kind of pay? What about workers in Oshawa and Whitby who are trying to pay down their mortgages?
While Flaherty fiddles, we stand to lose a big chunk of our manufacturing sector. And we’re not likely to get it back.
It’s hard to know whether Flaherty is intelligent enough to understand that his ideological outlook favours capital at the expense of labour, or is a bone-headed true-believer who thinks free markets are socially neutral. For the auto workers in his riding, it doesn’t much matter.
Their powerful MP won’t do a damn thing for them. Flaherty and the other members of the Harper government don’t believe in the concept of an industrial strategy to nurture and protect high paying jobs in key industrial sectors.
The trouble is that although the ways they do it may have changed, the French, Germans, Italians, Swedes, Japanese and South Koreans carefully protect their vital industrial sectors. And the Americans do exactly the same thing through the backdoor route of defence spending to procure equipment from key industries, including the auto industry.
Maybe it’s time for auto workers to find an MP who isn’t a neo-con boy scout who is dumb enough to think our competitors play by the free market rules they profess and don’t follow.
Ed Broadbent's old stomping ground is going to the dogs, that is the Conservatives, the running dogs of the US imperialists as the old Maoists would say. However, Canada is valuable mainly as a source of natural resources such as oil, gas, wood, and minerals. As long as we continue to supply the US with those and help its energy security by developing the oil sands everything is OK. The workers at the GM plant in Oshawa elected a Conservative. I wonder if this will have any effect on their voting patterns.
Jim Flaherty: The Auto Workers’ free-market friend in Ottawa
G M’s announcement last week that it will cut 1200 jobs at an Oshawa, Ontario truck plant is the latest signal that the nation’s manufacturing sector is in deep trouble.
CAW economist Jim Stanford told the Toronto Star that “economic research over the years has shown that the spinoff effects in total add up to about 7.5 jobs” for every automobile job that is eliminated. The effect, therefore, of the GM job cuts will be the loss of about eight thousand jobs in a host of companies that supply the Oshawa truck plant as well as in local restaurants, building businesses and a variety of service industries. Many of the lost jobs in the auto parts sector will be south of the border in American plants that supply the truck plant.
Manufacturing layoffs are becoming an ever more common occurrence in Ontario, as core industrial employment is cut back, and the nation’s heavy industries are hollowed out.
Because the overall economic health of the country appears relatively robust, the growing crisis in the auto sector and in manufacturing as a whole has been masked.
Since the late 1990s, about 10,000 auto assembly jobs have been lost in Canada and over the past six years, 13,000 jobs have been cut in the auto parts sector. This year in addition to the General Motors jobs cuts, Chrysler has decided to eliminate 2000 jobs in Ontario.
One might expect that Jim Flaherty, Canada’s Finance Minister, who represents the riding of Whitby-Oshawa, where many of the workers who are about to lose their livelihoods reside, would be working overtime to save auto jobs.
On the contrary, he seems philosophical, content with the stance his government is taking. He told a reporter that he was “concerned” about the GM announcement and mentioned his recent budget’s faster write-offs for capital investments in machinery and equipment for manufacturers as evidence that the government is doing a lot for the auto industry.
At a time when the effects of the rapid surge in the value of the Canadian dollar and the slowdown in US auto sales are combining to threaten thousands more auto jobs, Flaherty’s faster write offs will be about as effective as a finger in a dike during a storm surge. Everybody knows that in a slowing market faster write offs don’t generate additional capital investment.
Flaherty is, and always has been, a staunch right-wing conservative, proud of never having interfered with the celestial functioning of free markets. That’s why he can be philosophical about the loss of good jobs in his riding. “People who have been losing jobs have been getting other jobs,” he noted.
He makes it seem so easy. What alternative jobs will those who are laid off be getting and for what kind of pay? What about workers in Oshawa and Whitby who are trying to pay down their mortgages?
While Flaherty fiddles, we stand to lose a big chunk of our manufacturing sector. And we’re not likely to get it back.
It’s hard to know whether Flaherty is intelligent enough to understand that his ideological outlook favours capital at the expense of labour, or is a bone-headed true-believer who thinks free markets are socially neutral. For the auto workers in his riding, it doesn’t much matter.
Their powerful MP won’t do a damn thing for them. Flaherty and the other members of the Harper government don’t believe in the concept of an industrial strategy to nurture and protect high paying jobs in key industrial sectors.
The trouble is that although the ways they do it may have changed, the French, Germans, Italians, Swedes, Japanese and South Koreans carefully protect their vital industrial sectors. And the Americans do exactly the same thing through the backdoor route of defence spending to procure equipment from key industries, including the auto industry.
Maybe it’s time for auto workers to find an MP who isn’t a neo-con boy scout who is dumb enough to think our competitors play by the free market rules they profess and don’t follow.
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