A crisis brought to you from the people who ask you to vote for tax cuts (mostly for the rich and corporations) deregulation and privatization. Our job as citizens is to free the corporate world of any responsibility other than to provide us with the opportunity to work for them and consume their products. When necessary they must be protected from their own excesses, in the current U.S. case, by potentially handing the corporate sector a sum of taxpayer dollars equal to the entire GDP of Canada.

Deregulation began in the United States in the 1970s. Some two decades (2002) after it began, Consumer Reports (CR) evaluated deregulation in the US. According to CR consumers have lost ground since deregulation began.

Not exactly a bastion of radicalism, for CR the marketplace has become more adversarial toward consumers. The absence of strict rules has inspired aggressive tactics and enabled sellers to gain disproportionate power over buyers. Banking, for example, according to CR, has been a disaster, with 1600 bank failures in the US and a mammoth 160 billion dollar bailout. * This all took place before the current banking crisis.*

CR suggests that free market players are always devising new mischief, and governments must remain vigilant and respond swiftly.

Toxic food, air, toys, water, electricity blackouts, disappearing savings and pensions are only a part of the problem.

Exploding deficits will bring the call for more cuts to health, education and welfare along with more privatization and deregulation because the state can’t afford to spend those increasingly scarce taxes or interfere with the efficient private market while spending on the military and cutting taxes further.

A decade of Liberal rule has helped put Canada on a similar path. A Conservative majority will accelerate that process and a potentially crisis ridden U.S. economy with whom we have become so much more dependent threatens to further expose the dangers of our made in Canada right-wing model.

Sweden, Finland and Norway are highly regulated, highly taxed, welfare states that are among the most competitive in the world, while running fiscal surpluses.