Liberal government's first budget 22 March 2016

Pondering wrote:

I don't like this at all.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/03/25/bill-morneau-liberal-promises_n_...

“I think we’ve absolutely met up to our promises,” he told The Huffington Post Canada during an interview in his 17th-floor corner office on Thursday.

“We said that there has been a real challenge for middle class Canadians over a generation, and we said that we’re dealing with low growth over the last decade. [The] most important thing that we said to Canadians was we are going to deal with middle class Canadians’ challenges, and we’ve started right down the path of doing that.”

 

Say that although some changes were made you kept to the spirit of the budget, for the most part delivered what Canadians are expecting but own up to the fact that all the promises were not kept in this budget and tell me why not. Don't give me a line.

 

As many of us have been trying to tell you, this is the Liberal way. Run left, govern right, lie their asses off. You were oh so confident that this time it would be different, but...

mark_alfred wrote:

Mulcair comments on the budget, explaining why the NDP will be voting against it:  http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2685885757/

It seems to me what Mulcair is saying is that the federal government should be spending more, taking in a bit more than they are now, and also be running balanced budgets over the short term. I don't see how that's possible all at the same time. During the election the voters didn't buy this approach and I think they still don't. Instead I think the NDP should be supporting something more similar to the CCPA's alternative budget.

Michael Moriarity wrote:

Pondering wrote:

I don't like this at all.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/03/25/bill-morneau-liberal-promises_n_...

“I think we’ve absolutely met up to our promises,” he told The Huffington Post Canada during an interview in his 17th-floor corner office on Thursday.

“We said that there has been a real challenge for middle class Canadians over a generation, and we said that we’re dealing with low growth over the last decade. [The] most important thing that we said to Canadians was we are going to deal with middle class Canadians’ challenges, and we’ve started right down the path of doing that.”

 

Say that although some changes were made you kept to the spirit of the budget, for the most part delivered what Canadians are expecting but own up to the fact that all the promises were not kept in this budget and tell me why not. Don't give me a line.

 

As many of us have been trying to tell you, this is the Liberal way. Run left, govern right, lie their asses off. You were oh so confident that this time it would be different, but...

Actually, Michael, as Adam Radwanski and Thomas Walkolm wrote this week, this Liberal budget is very different from the Chrétien-Martin years.  It is putting investment & social programs as the priority, and going into deficit, rather than slashing & cutting.

As the commentators pointed out, this may change later in the mandate, but at this point in time, the NDP doesn't really have a lot of justification for attacking the Liberals, particularly since the NDP hasn't explained how it would balance the budget if it were in power right now.

Debater wrote:

Actually, Michael, as Adam Radwanski and Thomas Walkolm wrote this week, this Liberal budget is very different from the Chrétien-Martin years.  It is putting investment & social programs as the priority, and going into deficit, rather than slashing & cutting.

As the commentators pointed out, this may change later in the mandate, but at this point in time, the NDP doesn't really have a lot of justification for attacking the Liberals, particularly since the NDP hasn't explained how it would balance the budget if it were in power right now.

Well, I was responding to Pondering's complaint, but you do have a point. It's an unusual case. The common practice is for a government to enact its most unpopular measures in the first 2 years of a mandate, then turn to more popular items as the next election approaches. In this case, Trudeau used deficit spending in the first 2 years as a very successful wedge against the NDP during the campaign. This forces him to reverse the order, giving out whatever goodies he can at the start of his mandate, and saving the punishing stuff to the end. That may be good news for the CPC if they can find a sane and fairly attractive leader.

Michael Moriarity wrote:

Debater wrote:

Actually, Michael, as Adam Radwanski and Thomas Walkolm wrote this week, this Liberal budget is very different from the Chrétien-Martin years.  It is putting investment & social programs as the priority, and going into deficit, rather than slashing & cutting.

As the commentators pointed out, this may change later in the mandate, but at this point in time, the NDP doesn't really have a lot of justification for attacking the Liberals, particularly since the NDP hasn't explained how it would balance the budget if it were in power right now.

Well, I was responding to Pondering's complaint, but you do have a point. It's an unusual case. The common practice is for a government to enact its most unpopular measures in the first 2 years of a mandate, then turn to more popular items as the next election approaches. In this case, Trudeau used deficit spending in the first 2 years as a very successful wedge against the NDP during the campaign. This forces him to reverse the order, giving out whatever goodies he can at the start of his mandate, and saving the punishing stuff to the end. That may be good news for the CPC if they can find a sane and fairly attractive leader.

I think the Liberals could also continue continue giving out goodies and having deficits in the last two years of their mandate with the hope that they will get credit for having improved the economy during the 2019 election.

Debater wrote:

The new Abacus poll shows the Liberals gaining 3 points after the Budget -- from 44 to 47.

This Week: LPC 47, CPC 28, NDP 14

Last Week: LPC 44, CPC 29, NDP 16

http://abacusdata.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/EY-Abacus-Budget-Release...

Junior's empty-calorie budget certainly got a lot of help from his elitist friends in the establishment media.

It's an establishment kind of budget: throw the people a couple bones plus new tax cuts for the wealthy piled on top of 3 decades of tax cuts for the wealthy. (Our betters would rather give the people nothing, of course — except hundreds of billions of dollars in government debt.)

I hope the NDP dumps Mulcair, but for opposite reasons than what the shallow, calculated scheming of Liberal partisans is based on.

Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn show the times they are a changing. Trudeau is, ironically, yesterday's man clinging to the failed ideology that free trade and low taxes create middle class jobs and grow the economy. We have 25 years of consistent evidence that show the opposite is true. (Not sure how anyone can take this nonsense seriously.) Mulcair is the same kind of political animal : a Red Tory in Liberal's clothing.

Canada needs a true leader of the actual center-left — who actually believes in it — to start tearing up the place: i.e., expose these bribe-taking politicians and their masters' looternomics; talk over the on-the-take talking heads and connect directly to the people.

Mulcair might be an excellent Parliamentarian. (Not that anyone gives a crap.) But Canadians desperately need a real leader with real vision and ideas that are in stark contrast to all the failed corrupt bullshit we've had to put up since Reagan and Mulroney.

We are living in a terrible period in human history that has all but destroyed everything we built up in the post-war era. It has put civilization on the verge of collapse. We need actual real generational change: a New Deal to undo the damage done. We cannot afford to pretend any longer.

White Cat wrote:

JKR wrote:

I think the Liberals could also continue continue giving out goodies and having deficits in the last two years of their mandate with the hope that they will get credit for having improved the economy during the 2019 election.

Prince Charming's $20-billion stimulus package is half of Harper's $40-billion stimulus package. Although it's true that actual fiscal stimulus will stimulate demand and grow the economy, pretend fiscal stimulus won't have quite the same kick.

Trudeau seems to be a lot like Hebert Hoover, except he's spending less on infrastructure. Trudeau's doubling of Harper's infrastructure spending — from $65-billion over 10 years to $125-billion — won't even tackle the $125-billion infrastructure deficit we have now. A surplus of infrastructure spending is required to provide fiscal stimulus.

A lot could be accomplished by reversing failed tax cuts and bringing in new public benefits that increase disposable income and properly distribute incomes, like daycare, pharmacare, restoring UI benefits, restoring provincial transfers, etc. What Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz calls "trickle-up economics."

I agree. I wish the NDP under Mulcair were currently on this wavelength. I think the NDP would have done better in the election if they had clearly supported "trickle up economics." Hopefully by 2019 the NDP will have a clear consistent message for the voters whoever the leader is then.

mark_alfred wrote:

I note from the Abacus poll that one of the most popular measures in the budget is the tax cut, whereas the least popular measure is support for the CBC.  I myself don't care about the tax cut -- and in fact feel it's a mistake -- whereas I quite like the CBC and still have fond memories of the Beachcombers, SCTV, Knowlton Nash, the Friendly Giant, etc.

Yes, but we have to keep in mind that you (and I) are probably farther to the left than most Canadians.

I think support for the CBC & the arts is important too, but it appears that view is not shared by all.

BTW, these healthcare cuts are a double whammy because they are "pro-cyclical."

This is a very important concept in economics. Keynes invented the idea of using the government budget as a counterweight to tame boom-to-bust economic cycles. That is, counter-cyclical measures.

When the economy is in recession, spending goes up to compensate. Much of these counter-cyclical measures are built in. They are called "automatic stabilizers" (like unemployment insurance claims go up in a recession, so more government money is paid out.)

So Harper's pro-cyclical healthcare funding means it drops to the minimum when the deficit spikes in a recession because of the payouts in automatic stabilizers. That means the provinces get hit twice as hard: reduced healthcare transfers and mounting costs.

Are any pundits complaining that the Harper/Trudeau funding formula is pro-cyclical and the very opposite of sound economic fiscal policy according to macroeconomics 101?

White Cat wrote:

The captured news media is not going to tell you taxes were cut by $100-billion a year. They are going to tell you Trudeau is Tommy Douglas.

That article by Chris Hall is from last Fall and appears to mainly refer to the whole deficit issue -- the fact that the Liberals were willing to run a deficit but that the Mulcair NDP wasn't.

But I agree with you that Chris Hall strikes me as one of the more Conservative reporters at CBC.

Debater wrote:

White Cat wrote:

The captured news media is not going to tell you taxes were cut by $100-billion a year. They are going to tell you Trudeau is Tommy Douglas.

That article by Chris Hall is from last Fall and appears to mainly refer to the whole deficit issue -- the fact that the Liberals were willing to run a deficit but that the Mulcair NDP wasn't.

But I agree with you that Chris Hall strikes me as one of the more Conservative reporters at CBC.

Do you believe in your own bullshit? Or do you simply believe in nothing?

I suspect he is wondering if you have any coherent belief system that you'd like to share. 

Debater wrote:

White Cat wrote:

The captured news media is not going to tell you taxes were cut by $100-billion a year. They are going to tell you Trudeau is Tommy Douglas.

That article by Chris Hall is from last Fall and appears to mainly refer to the whole deficit issue -- the fact that the Liberals were willing to run a deficit but that the Mulcair NDP wasn't.

But I agree with you that Chris Hall strikes me as one of the more Conservative reporters at CBC.

The column was not written "last Fall" but right in the midst of the election campaign on Sept 12. (About 5 days after Labor day when the real campaign began.) This while Mulcair was leading the center-left vote. (Trudeau having lost the big lead he held since becoming leader for being too right wing.)

So here the "Conservative" partisan Chris Hall has taken it upon himself, as every good journalist should, to help salvage the Trudeau campaign by using his position of public trust to misinform the people that not only is Trudeau left of Mulcair, he represents real traditional NDP values.

(Old-time Liberals like Chretien, who was once part of an actual centrist liberal government under Trudeau Sr., called NDPers "Liberals in a hurry." Of course, these days the Conservatives are really Liberals in a hurry: in a hurry to implement neoliberal policies that destroy the Just Society real Liberals and NDPers built up during the post-war Keynesian era.)

As an actual centrist Keynesian liberal, I was fucking furious with this partisan-messaging piece predicated on lies, corruption and abuse of the public trust. This is no different than a judge taking a bribe.

(I would say, 'no different than a politician taking a bribe,' but that has apparently become acceptable in our present debauched period in history. Civilization has embarked upon a deflationary death spiral founded on corrupt public servants, and their plutocrat masters, lying to the people and looting the place for everything they can steal.)

More bullshit from Chris Hall:

Analysis: Trudeau's Liberals use budget to refresh their brand: Chris Hall

mark_alfred wrote:

page 223 of the budget wrote:

To protect Canadian taxpayers in the unlikely event of a large bank failure, the Government is proposing to implement a bail-in regime that would reinforce that bank shareholders and creditors are responsible for the bank’s risks—not taxpayers. This would allow authorities to convert eligible long-term debt of a failing systemically important bank into common shares to recapitalize the bank and allow it to remain open and operating. Such a measure is in line with international efforts to address the potential risks to the financial system and broader economy of institutions perceived as “too-big-to-fail”.

The key phrase here is "eligible long-term debt". Normal deposits might or might not be included. Perhaps it would only apply to G.I.C.s, or perhaps only bonds issued by the bank. The devil here truly is in the details, and I assume even the MSM will pay attention when some legislation attempts to define the phrase.

Pondering wrote:

http://www.cdic.ca/en/about-di/what-we-cover/Pages/default.aspx

What's Covered?

We insure eligible deposits at each member institution up to a maximum of $100,000 (principal and interest combined) per depositor per insured category.

To be eligible for deposit insurance, deposits must be payable in Canada and in Canadian currency. We do not cover foreign currency deposits including US dollars.

Eligible deposits include:

• Savings accounts
• Chequing accounts
• Term deposits, (such as GICs) with original terms to maturity of five years or less
• Debentures issued to evidence deposits by CDIC member institutions (other than banks)
• Money orders and bank drafts issued by CDIC members
• Cheques certified by CDIC members

 

What's Not Covered

Uninsured financial products include:

• mutual funds (including money market funds), stocks and bonds;
• term deposits, such as GICs, with original terms to maturity greater than five years;
• foreign currency deposits (e.g., U.S. dollars);
• treasury bills and bankers' acceptances;
• principal protected notes that are traded;
• debentures issued by banks, governments or corporations;
• deposits with receipts payable to bearer (rather than to a named person);
• deposits held at financial institutions that are not CDIC members.

Under the CDIC Deposit Insurance Information By-law, member institutions must notify depositors when a deposit (or deposit-like) product is not eligible for insurance. For example, if a term deposit is in a foreign currency, the deposit certificate or receipt must state that it is not insured by CDIC.

CDIC may or may not have any relevance here. We will have to wait for what the government defines as eligible debt. Indeed some of the items not covered would not seem to fit the definition of " long term".