>I've been reading Linda McQuaig's "Shooting the Hippo", about Canada's
>"deficit scare" of the early 1990's. There was a Canadian equivalent of
>Stossell at the time, Eric Malling, whose show "W5" had a program about a
>short-term currency crisis in New Zealand, presented as a deficit crisis
>with implications for Canada. McQuaig writes: "To illustrate the concept of
>the debt wall in Canadian terms, Malling presents us with an image of
>Canada's deputy finance minister walking in to a cabinet meeting and
>declaring that Canada's credit has run out. Malling only tells us that this
>is what 'economists are predicting.' Over lunch, however, Malling
>volunteers that the image in fact came from Howe president Tom Kierans..."
>She describes the C.D. Howe Institute as a "prominent Toronto think tank
>funded by Bay Street."
>
>So the question is - Does Stossell get fed ideas from right-wing think
>tanks in the US, and would it be easier to dismiss him if he did?
>
>There is also a new book by McQuaig, published earlier this year, called
>"The Cult of Impotence: Selling the Myth of Powerlessness in the Global
>Economy."
I've run into this argument many times. Canada's gross government debt in 1997 was 94% of GDP, the second-highest in the G7 (after Italy) and exceeded only by Belgium and Greece in the broader OECD. Canada's net international investment position was -US$243 billion in 1996, or over 40% of GDP. Doesn't this sound like a debt problem? I don't think Canada's red ink is just the invention of right-wing think tanks. Of course, they use the debt to push a reactionary agenda, but you just can't deny the reality of Canada's being in hock. That's one of the reasons the C$ hit an all-time low against the US$ yesterday, no?
Doug