Tar Sands Baby
I decided to read an article in the Globe’s business section today entitled, “Twilight of a Boom”, because I’d had a glass of wine and was feeling quite sophisticated.
Also, I’d really like to be more conversant than I am in the snootier money matters. As it is, I’m flummoxed and confounded by stock market yak and mutual fund blather, although I’ve noticed that a locked-in rrsp (balanced mutual fund) is suddenly on the rise.
But that just makes me think interest rates will head up, too, and although one can make more with a mutual fund than a GiC, I was in a chaotic state of mind in the early to mid 2000s and so didn’t lose a dime in 2008 when so many other people did.
I just left my money in a GiC, resisting all entreaties to invest, and started all over again in the work world, saving any leftover nickels and dimes for a rainy day.
Anyway, that’s not what this entry is about because halfway into the article, which is exactly what you’d expect, a run down of the run down Alberta economy, where men are men and women are left running up government deficits, David Emerson shows up.
Yes, THAT David Emerson.
And here, believe it or not, is what he has to say with regard to the inevitable bust to the boom of the Alberta boom bust economy:
“Canadians have not developed an acute appreciation of the extent to which our fiscal situation is dependent on the Alberta growth factor and the natural resource revenues.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but I’d like David Emerson to experience an acute appreciation of the extent to which that statement has irked me by experiencing his underpants being yanked up over his ears.
Yes, that’s right, an atomic wedgie.
Because if there’s one thing Canadian have developed, especially the eastern bastards freezing in the dark, it’s an acute appreciation of the extent to which our fiscal situation is dependent on the Alberta growth factor and the natural resource revenues.
Jesus christ on a pink slip, I am so going to start paying attention to what those backroom cockburgers are saying about us in the business section of the Globe.
But, you know, Louis CK does a bit in one of his comedy routines, I think it’s the one where he goes on about how amazing everything is and how spoiled we’ve become that we don’t appreciate anything anymore, where he admits he kind of hopes everything crashes and we have to go back to using donkeys to carry our pots and pans around.
I say we Canadians use our politicians instead of donkeys, starting with Alberta Conservatives and working our way up.
I think you are just baiting me now, and I confess to having just gurgled back a rum and coke…. I mean, fuck. We’re now dependent on tar sands bitumen because the geniuses in charge for the last 30 years have outsourced every fucking thing that we used to manufacture to low wage countries? (Auto Pact excepted) Alberta’s economy is going south because they sell their poison shit for less than it cost them to produce it? I’m no economist, and I don’t play one on TV, but even I know that’s not sound financial management. Which reminds me, Gary Doer, the former union leader and socialist Premier of Manitoba is now Ottawa’s biggest tar sands shill??? I mean, what the fuck. Short term thinking deluxe. We’re done. We’re fucked. I wish i could lay back and enjoy it.
I haven’t had a glass of wine, or a rum and coke, but man! I want to help administer that wedgie.
My .. it was freezing here in Ontario.. then the above article warmed us all up like a solar furnace..
We intend to celebrate our new found warmth.. if not wealth
with a few pirate rums n coke cocktails.. later..
a glass o whine even later, with dinner..
but noo … no twilight cockburger for us.. or spankin of donkees .. thankee
Yestiddy I damn near choked on a very hoppy craft beer.. n spewed some from my nose
on reading the quoted explanation below… from a well known pernicious public servant beerocrat
So if you have any doubts bout the capabilities.. or crassness.. or sheer duplicity
of the loutpack in Ottawalberta… re tar sands, jobs for scientists, the mentally ill.. or the coast guard,
just try to to parse or comprehend this noyz …
re how closing the Kitsilano Life Guard Station = more rescue boats in the water
“The paramouncy of government resources in this area is on public safety and the government is allocating its resources in a way that we believe, based on the advice we have received from the coast guard, that is best in terms of public safety,” the prime minister said.
“That is to put as many of the resources as we can into actually having rescue boats in the water. That’s where we put our investments going forward.”
urgh .. gurgle ..
@salamander horde, I read that yesterday too. Even Orwell didn’t have the imagination to go that far.
Why don’t we leave, Harper, Ottawa and Alberta, as their own country? Who needs them? They are a cesspool of corruption, thefts and greed. Harper is running out of degenerates, to do his dirty for him. Harper has his asinine Omnibull-S-Bill, now doing his dirty work. The rest of the provinces can unite, and be our own country too. We know the Federal election was cheated.
Our resources and resource jobs, are being given to a Communist country. CSIS warned of Communist China’s huge inroads into Canada. BC was specifically mentioned. Gordon Campbell sold BC out to Red China long ago. We funnel our tax dollars to Harper, to thieve and waste. Are we crazy? We are paying Harper, to destroy our own country? Using our tax dollars to do so. This country is no longer Canada anyway. We have no say in this country, what-so-ever.
It’s almost amazing Harper’s head doesn’t split in two, he’s such a talking contradiction to reality.