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I see that inflation, under Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has suddenly become as bad as back when his father, Pierre Eliot Trudeau, was the PM in 1983. (He was PM from 1968-79, and 1980-84)
What makes my middle age a pain,
Is seeing stupidity come round again.
It was during the fall of 1970 or 1971 school year (I had him twice) that Principle Wes Jansen told us the experts were baffled by “stagflation” where society could have both inflation and a stagnant economy, at the same time. They just didn’t know how it was happening. Without saying “Nixon shock” (going off the gold standard) Mr. Jansen told us you could now take a dollar bill to the bank and no longer receive gold: you would be given back another dollar.
In the mid seventies, at community college, I took basic economics using a textbook that was surprisingly easy, as if it was some sort hybrid, partly for college students, partly for the brighter US high school kids. I perused it carefully, including the index: Nothing! Obviously, economists didn’t know what caused inflation. I remember that Pierre Trudeau was calling for Canadians to keep their wage and price increases to “six and five” percent. To him inflation was some sort of mass phenomenon, mysterious, subject to his moral persuasion. “Six and five.” Decades later his son Justin, who leads by virtue signalling, was to say, “The budget will balance itself.”
In fairness to both Trudeaus, Gerald Ford distributed buttons saying WIN, for “whip inflation now.” I don’t suppose any scientist tracked the effect the buttons had.
About the time of “six and five” I read a newspaper piece advising that to make a law fixing in place prices and wages would not work, that it had been tried in Ancient Rome when those people were wrestling with their own demon inflation. As a child, seeing that a reporter saw fit to say this gave me a sense of how baffled and desperate the grownups must be.
Today I feel a middle aged tiredness at being treated like a simpleton: At the same time the public and their expert economists were baffled could, say, the US Secretary of State secretly know? Yes. Business sage Peter Drucker, in his memoirs, reports meeting with his fellow European, Henry Kissinger, and that man angrily admitting he was causing inflation in order to pay for oil after OPEC hiked prices. Ya, but the government of the people wasn’t about to tell the people…
Is the pope catholic? Are people still stupid? Are there still things we aren’t being told? Yes, but if I told you then I’d be embarrassed, because you might expect me to reach for my tinfoil hat.
OK, since you twist my rubber arm, here are the questions I think your senator, in parliament or congress, won’t answer, even as the Russians are months (February to July) into their “special military operation”:
How many cannons, with a range like the Russian artillery has, are within the thirty NATO nations?
How many cannons—what percentage of NATO cannons—are supposedly going to be sent to Ukraine?
(For comparison: Canada took less time, after declaring war on the Nazis in September, to have their army First Division in Britain by Christmas)
Forget the promises to send, what has actually arrived?
Will—would—the NATO nations, including little Canada, require a “special military-industrial operation” in order to manufacture and supply enough cannons for Ukraine?
I peruse CBC and BBC for these questions, but— Nothing! Call me cynical and middle aged, but I wonder… Do certain experts, such as the Secretary of State, secretly know…?
If you find out, during the coming months, please feel free to comment here.
Sean Crawford,
as the wind blows.
(I asked my Member of Parliament, but parliament is closed so he can’t ask anybody just yet—and I don’t think he will be answered)
Update: I posted this, and wrote to my member of parliament, in early July. Now in later October comes a National Post story Page NP4 of the Calgary Herald for October 18) that “National Defence and top firms that produce arms…are financing a conference in Ottawa on October 25 titled “Putting Canadian Deference Procurement on a War Footing.” The article notes, “The Liberal government has not made any announcement that firms need to go onto a war footing or that military procurement process would use the urgent acquisition process.” The process was used when Canadian forces were farcically unequipped for Afghanistan, but nothing could be done, at first, because it was peacetime. (For example, vehicles without floor (I.E.D.) armour, green uniforms made for Europe not the desert, et.)
