financial regulation

Canada's banking system demonstrates the virtues of interventionist and flexible government regulation and public ownership. These features long pre-date the election of our current government.

The self-congratulatory myth of Canadian exceptionalism is an act of willful denial. All that bragging about our banking sector's resilience is no guarantee about the future.

The Barclays scandal is not a conspiracy made by radical anti-capitalists determined to destroy the world. It is a sad story, revealing symptoms of a chronic disease.

Those who believe the financial meltdown was a one-off fluke and that lessons have been learned to prevent a re-occurrence, need to think again. Derivatives operations bedevil the world economy today.

Iceland is a great example of people who fought for civility in the face of capitalism run amok. They took a stand when all of the forces of international capital were allied against them.

Our own finance minister, Jim Flaherty, along with Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, recently came out strongly in opposition to a modest proposal to regulate the U.S. banking system.