I Hear Them Presses Hummin', They's Rollin' off the Dough

Next week the G20 nations have another security exercise-cum-fancy luncheon in Seoul. The topic this time, as it was last time in Toronto, is what to do about getting the economic ball rolling again. And this time the focus will be on trying to get everybody 'onside' to do the same thing when  everybody is starting to make gestures that their situation is different/more serious/more deserving than anybody else's.

Harper the Debtless is calling for some concentric approach to monetary policy and exchange rates. This because big money seems to be prowling the earth in search of profit derived from currency fluctuations. Naturally such 'investments' are ephemeral in their effect - here one minute and sunk in another currency elsewhere, the next. Since the investment industry can't stop this from happening, governments have to take steps to minimize the effects..The first  minimization should be a flat 20 percent surcharge on all money going out of the country. That would slow the high rollers down a little and certainly slow down the foreign trade imbalance. But that would not be in keeping with the spirit of the 'free market' that caused most of these problems in the first place.

Hanging over all is the Damoclean sword of debt. Not everybody, thank goodness, has it,  but everybody is affected when the biggest economy on earth is raddled with it. It is that debt that is hamstringing the American recovery, and, perhaps, the cost of a war or three and  good old global domination, that adds to it daily. Like a fat, drunk uncle on a picnic hike, America's demanding a lot of support from the 'rest of the family'. Particularly in parts of the EU and elsewhere, where the good times were rolling along with those dud mortgages, the sword dangles equally menacingly. Some countries in Europe have America's problems in spades.

Naturally America sees China as it's biggest monetary problem. The Chinese have been buying US bonds and T bills for more than a decade, actually they been taking them in trade, and buying them with those greenbacks they get from the dollar stores. So now America wants to raise interest in, and hence the price of, those bonds. How they going to do that? Well, buster, just you hobble yer horse; they're going to print 500 billion in not-yet-existing greenbacks and buy their own bonds. So the banks that market the bonds will get another 'cash infusion', or in this case a "quantitative easing" -  to not loan money to people who can't borrow it because they have no job, or the rich who are going to risk it on the money markets, or just to pay out a few more dud mortgages. Obviously the undiscredited Chicago School of  'go big or go home' economics is still at the helm. They must really believe that Keynes got it all wrong about the inflationary effect of printing money that isn't directed to creating jobs.Apparently they aim to prove it.

What about China? China is letting its Yuan do a 'test float' with the market and  it has lost some value. I may have gotten a C- in econ 101, but it strikes me that a devaluing currency has the wrong effect on a trade deficit than the one  the mavens of Wall Street want. Shouldn't the Yuan be increasing its value against the buck? That would slow imports a bit and make buying back some of those T bills and bonds a little easier. But not if the Chinese think they're getting monopoly money. The inscrutable orientals aren't as stupid as they were once cracked-up to be and if the US thinks they'd like to take some inflato-bucks  for that reduced trade, Bernancke needs to get his earhair trimmed.

Big Meetings

Ontari-ari-ario played host to the world's creme de la creme this week. Leaders of the leading G20 and the ultra elite leading G8 were here for their bi-annual readjustment. I would hope that, if nothing else, they had that drummer girl and the guy in the wheel chair out to sing the 'There's no place like this for meeeee...' song. Those world leaders would have been impressed. They got all the bums out from under the overpasses and off the sewer and subway grates for the meetings in the fortress of solitude they made out of downtown TO. And they paved and painted everything from the Airport at Huntsville - which now has enough gear to land a space shuttle, to the resort at Deerhurst. They even had trained anti-terrorist geese on the dock and down by the water. But the beaver in town was only for the cops.

Meanwhile,  down in the big smoke, them evil protesters - the Black Hundreds or 'bloc centimes', as they're called, biked in from the easter' province to do dirt in the streets of Tronna. While Toronto's finest were busy putting the boots to a bunch of sissies and girls in the park, those black basterds ran away up the street to bust things where the cops weren't. Pleece Chief Bert Winkledink , wearing his team tactical outfit, was a-huffin and a-puffin about this "never before seen" level of vandalism, and the outrage to the  citizenry and peaceful protesters and such. He wasn't saying anything about the phalanx of troopers who advanced 'swinging their batons and swearing' to rescue some flatfoot trapped in his squad car and then beating a tactical retreat while being forced to allow those 'betes noires' to play with the horn and sireen before setting the car on fire. The boys in blue abandoned a couple (4) of their units in the unexpected onslaught. Wonder why they didn't rescue the cars, too, by driving them behind pleece lines? It don't look good for the budget next time round if something don't get wrecked this time round, eh?

Just a thought, but maybe those black doofi are the latest application of applied Quebecoise pleece science. They know that, "Allons mes Gars! On aura les maudits anglais!" might not get the protestors all fired up, like it didn't last time, up their way. What the hell, whether you get to toss a rock or two, or thump a liberal, or not, it's all overtime anyhow!


One of the more notable additions were the RCMP, who showed up too late to get the good hotel rooms. They were to be bunked down in some sort of Hurricane Katrina complex.  "Well hold the donut Martha", said their union reps - they're unionized these days y'know,  "We'll be having a little more respect than that, if you please." And so a last minute search for decent digs ensued. They  probably  displaced the volunteers from the Chinguacousy Volunteer PD and a couple of other detachments of lesser lights. As it is, the senior pleece service got pride of place right out front with the doorman at the King Eddy and the Royal York.  Got a good close squint at them pols and their arm-flluff, too, I'd bet. Makes a fellah feel good, or better than one of those stupid judicial inquiries about tasers. All that was missing was an Afghan 'hero' , or two, going down to the coroner's office to be saluted. Even the black hundreds might have dropped the bandanna in the passing presence of somebody's kid who paid the ultimate whammy on behalf of their freedom to protest, and get clubbed and arrested in defence of democracy.


The Mayor of Toronto Dave Whiteman, the 'silver fox', came down on the evildoers and disinvited their welcome to his city. They weren't even welcome to grab a burger on their way out of town. The good protesters, though, could stay, but they had to stay good.

Humpty McGinty the premeer of  Ontario was 'on the wall' for allowing the Tronna pleece service special powers of arrest without telling anybody. "That's a dirty lie.", he told the press, "It's on the website for anybody who wanted to look, or at least it will be next week after the G20's over".  As if the Tronna pleece service needs any special permission to do anything Chief  Bill Bailey tells them to do. Could just see that: "Well Mr Preemeer. In order to guarantee that the black horde won't get away from us and burn things like pleece cars, I will be requiring special legislation to permit my troops to arrest anyone for nothing at all. The Mayor, I know, has an aversion to this 'pleece state' sort of thing, so I wondered if ....?"

"Eggs-ackly,  Chief Bill. Allow me to set you up right away. There is this interesting little law enacted during WW2 -  that's the BIG one private Ryan got saved in - to make this a better place and it was never repealed. It's called the 'dun the hun for freedom' law and we can use that to get the riff raff out of the way of the black plague. You go Boy!"

And so he went.

By the way, the only real accomplishment of the summits,  besides a huge bill and some great eats,  is a strongly worded message to Iran and North Korea - "Mr. Netanyahu, Take Down that wall!"  - No, that;'s not it. Wait a minute ..... eh......