One G20 Agreement You Don’t Want To Be Binding — Lesson Ireland Is Learning

EEEH GAD!! John Ibbitson rearing his ugly head again. He’s become a cheerleader. He’s even used the word “Kudos!” to describe Master Steve’s hosting skills of the G20.

While much of the chatter around the G20 summit has focused on fake lakes, billion-dollar budgets and burning police cars, the greater reality is that Stephen Harper guided the leaders of the world’s largest and most influential economies to an accord – call it the Toronto Consensus – that surprised even the leaders themselves.

“Honestly, this is more than I expected,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged. The major economies have agreed to act in concert to cut their deficits in half by 2013, and then to stabilize or reduce their debts as a percentage of GDP by 2016

I think it bears reminding that Merkel, along with British PM David Cameron fucked off much of the Sunday Afternoon meetings in favour of  watching their respective countries play World Cup Soccer. Besides, something tells me, Merkel may no longer be chancellor by 2013 or whenever the next elections are in Germany. A German friend of mine tells me she isn’t very well liked these days. I digress…

What’s scarier is that for some reason, Ibbitson too, is drinking that austerity kool-aid. Yikes! It’s toxic, as Nobel prive winning economist, Paul Krugman has been warning us as of late.

Ok, Frmgrl, before you go into the orgasm of your life over dreamy Stevie (get in line, Hunter!!), you’ve been brainwashed further without even realizing it. Oh, the curse of the Harpercon cult.

We should count our blessings that we have PM Harper at the helm of our country.  PM Harper is a true statesman,works well with and is very well liked and respected by his counterparts.
Thank you to Mr. Ibbitson for the unusually  positive  piece on PM Harper and his accomplishments.

Oh Frmgrl, what exactly would those accomplishments be? Same question for Ibbit. Sending us to deficit before the recession?  Shutting down parliament twice in 13 months to run away from the truth or his detractors?  Making us a laughing stalk on the world stage? Turning the business district in the downtown core of Canada’s biggest city into a police state? Ok, this is fun, admittedly; continuing to get publicly smacked by President Obama.

Oh, I know!  it’s the accomplishment of convincing the European leaders to sign a pledge to basically drive us into the next Great Depression!!

Ok, that like most good neo-cons of today, that must make you ga ga giddy.  Fat cats living it up while austerity measures on the backs of society’s most vulnerable. Guess what sweetheart? Not sure if this will deprogram you, but you will be a part of that Third Depression too, dear.

POGGE bests summarizes this entire G20 debacle & Circus:

That pretty much covers it. We just paid north of a billion dollars to burnish Harper’s image and to be told that we’re going to suffer for the sins of the wealthiest among us.

I really couldn’t have put it any better. How could anyone be this sadistic?

Here’s more from Krugman:

It’s almost as if the financial markets understand what policy makers seemingly don’t: that while long-term fiscal responsibility is important, slashing spending in the midst of a depression, which deepens that depression and paves the way for deflation, is actually self-defeating.

So I don’t think this is really about Greece, or indeed about any realistic appreciation of the tradeoffs between deficits and jobs. It is, instead, the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times.

And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.

Ok, cons, correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t conservatives like it when the population is working? When the population is working, they’re not on the dole; they’re contributing to society as well as to the economy, right?

Oops! Forgot, that  would perhaps have been yesterday’s cons if they were more pragmatic. Today’s conservatives are sadistic and evul, or just plain brain washed that they won’t know what hit them until it’s too late and that will be when Steve spits them out when he gets his majority and implements his draconian cuts on the backs of the working class and the rest of society’s vulnerable.

Further proof that austerity just doesn’t work. Ireland has been at it for a few years now; they’re worse off than they were before and it promises to just get worse. A must read! Go!

Nearly two years ago, an economic collapse forced Ireland to cut public spending and raise taxes, the type of austerity measures that financial markets are now pressing on most advanced industrial nations.

“When our public finance situation blew wide open, the dominant consideration was ensuring that there was international investor confidence in Ireland so we could continue to borrow,” said Alan Barrett, chief economist at the Economic and Social Research Institute of Ireland. “A lot of the argument was, ‘Let’s get this over with quickly.’ ”

Rather than being rewarded for its actions, though, Ireland is being penalized. Its downturn has certainly been sharper than if the government had spent more to keep people working. Lacking stimulus money, the Irish economy shrank 7.1 percent last year and remains in recession.

Joblessness in this country of 4.5 million is above 13 percent, and the ranks of the long-term unemployed — those out of work for a year or more — have more than doubled, to 5.3 percent.

So, Vanillaman from Happy Wanderer, this G20 agreement is one agreement we don’t want to be binding.

But there is one major difference between Harper and the European leaders who are gung ho over the rush for austerity; those leaders will face voters and will be voted out. Irish PM Brian Cowen is likely to lose his next election due to his savage cuts.

An election will face us in the Fall and I still maintain that it will be the last election we’ll ever see if Steve gets his majority.  And yes, there are folks in Toronto still willing more than ever now, to give Stevie his majority as they seemed to have embraced that police state.  Helps when Redneck Ryan does Master Steve’s bidding for him. After observing what happened in TO, I’m convinced more than ever that Steve will seek to remove elections or at the very least, make sure that they’re nothing more than symbolic smoke screens.

And Ibbit & Frmgrl, that maternal health pledge is less than our security bill which proved to be a total waste as it simply paid for a 1000 plus power tripping Barney Fifes. Just sayin’.

After the week-end I had observed, I just came to dislike Canada further and the direction it’s going in. Certainly not the incremental road to fascism Master Steve is headed toward.