Re: OT: Canada Posts Whopping 13.8 Billion Surplus

In article <jkHLi.17229$Im1.9569@trnddc01>,
"M. Lippsxhitz, M.D." <mlipps@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


I think the most significant impact would be WWI. Clearly, without
U.S. involvement there probably would have been an armistance

But that's exactly how the war ended. Nov. 11th was always called Armistice
day.

Hello,

Yes, bad wording on my part (actually, bad wording originally).
Dictionary.com literally says:

"a temporary suspension of hostilities by agreement of the warring
parties; truce: World War I ended with the armistice of 1918."

Kind of ironic for them to use that term, don't you think? It was
TEMPORARY. WWII kicked off almost on the button 20 years later.

More accurately (or useful), WWI ended with Germany's surrender.

on the
European mainland and the Prussian empire would have continued. This
probably would have been better for Poland since without Hitler, it
wouldn't have suffered the ravages of WWII and communism afterwards.

We can probably safely assume that Lenin would still be in Russia but
with a stable mainland Europe and strong prussian (Prussian?, Andre...
is that German/Austria?) empire,

It's a little complicated but no the Austrian Empire was not Prussian.



communism in the former, much smaller
USSR would have been contained and eliminated more quickly (possibly
by 1940's). No WWII, no Hiroshima. Also, no Israel and no anti-
western middle east. Germany would have replaced the United States as
the conservative force opposing the USSR in the cold war.

Without white guilt in the U.S. combined with feminism and marxism,
political correctness would have died on the vine. Women would have
the right to vote in most western countries, but that would probably
be it. No reverse discrimination or strong man hating sentiments.
Feminists who suggested in the 1950's "equality in the workplace"
would be laughed out of the room.

They were at the time.

I wish that was the case, but there was already strong liberal support
for women's equality in the workplace going back to the 1940's.

One of the wonderful things about usenet is that we can get a pretty
good idea of what people were saying based upon discussions but a lot of
events in history have been written differently than they actually
happened (such as the Red Scare and McCarthyism).

Without white guilt and post WWII marxism in the states, feminism
wouldn't have stood a chance.

Conclusion: The U.S. did a good job of cleaning up the mess they made
in WWI. We've done a LOUSY job of cleaning up the mess we made with
the civil war.

Hey, I like the US, and USians, well enough: Hell, I *married one*.

"Golly, I like blacks! I even have one for a friend!"

Sprio Agnew referred to white liberals as "limosine liberals" since so
many of them actually didn't want to associate with blacks (or working
class whites) but liked to sneer at how they were superior for caring
about them through socialist programs paid for by other people's
money.

This is nothing new and sort of reminds me of the Victorian do gooders. The
lower classes were studied and advised by their betters on how to live their
lives.

Now we have global warming hysteria with energy gluttons such as Al Gore
riding around in a 747 getting people to try to stop using cars and
electricity.

Hilarious.

Europeans, by contrast, are mostly statists who were used to a King and
Queen telling them what to do and have moved into the 20th century by
replacing them with bureaucrats.

I just don't cotton much to the idea that The American way is the
One Way. Especially, well, when The Canadian Way does very well
for us...

Your "Canadian Way" is simple capitalism when it comes to trade. Your
health care system is dysfunctional to the point where your own
government has to strongarm its citizens to try and keep them away
from exercising freedom of choice, your citizens swarm the US for some
forms of health care, or they have to sue to get freedom of choice.
Why is it that Quebec keeps wanting to secede?

The French are a peculiar people

I'm not an expert on Canada (as Andre will tell you) but it's my
understanding that Quebec is not interested in secession but rather
the opposite: They want to keep the resource rich Canada available as
a taxation and economic asset rather than vice versa.

Quebec would whither and die on it's own.

Oh, the Canadian Dollar closed the day at $1.00.52 US.

Well that is good news. Now, Canadians can afford to buy some US products
:o)

INDEED!

Money is now moving out of housing and into manufacturing just as the
dollar makes it desirable for foreigners to buy US products.

It's a REAL good time to buy stock in U.S. manufacturing stocks...

It says a lot that nobody paid much attention to the CD until it was
worth 1 USD...

Over the
year, the Canadian dollar has appreciated in value against the US $,
by 17%. The Euro has only gained 7% in that time, and the Pound
and Yen, only 3% each.

Yep, the US is having economic troubles right now. The apparent
difference between us is that we didn't gloat when the Canadian dollar
was worth half the US dollar.

Substitute "gloat" with care. Most Americans generally like Canada
and think of them as nice, friendly neighbors (although a bit strange)
but don't go crazy with envy.

Besides, if you knew anything about
economics, you'd know that you can't maintain growth forever.

On the larger scale, we have maintained growth forever with hiccups
along the way. This is true of humanity as well as the USA or Canada.

The USD is a mess due to one of my favorite topics: The US housing
bubble. Greenspan (the same genius that Bill Clinton ran water for)
lowered interest rates almost to the point of zero to counter the
dot.com recession (well underway while Clinton was in office) and
built a huge RE bubble that he only now realized after it's too
late.

But these so called RE bubbles exist almost everywhere on earth including
Canada.

Agreed but the US helped prop up theirs with incredibly low interest
rates and housing practices.

I had homeowners who thought they hit the lottery lecturing me that
prices could only go up up up! because all the mexicans coming across
would get loans and buy a half million dollar condo so I better buy now.


Granted, GW should have done something about it but he was too busy
trying to play nice with the leftists who view him as the source of
all evil in the universe.

The current fed is now terrified to raise interest rates hoping to
stop the US housing bubble collapse but it's too late. We now have
retired women holding up signs in front the pentagon in the hopes of
unloading their 2 bedroom ranch for $670K (any takers? :-) She seems
to think that her original purchase for 40K (or her husband's)
entitles her to get a family to go into debt for 50 years so she can
live like a princess.

It's all about supply and demand but at a certain point it has to collapse.
It's simple logic. Banks qualify people for mortgages based on their income
usually lending 2.5 x the person's incme. If the average income in the US is
for example $50k that person can only borrow $125k on a 30 yr mortgage. Do
the math, how many people can afford a $500k property. 1%?

That's the fundamentals. There's also rents. If someone is willing to
only pay a grand a month for rent on a 1 bedroom apartment, that is
going to undermine their willingness to pay much more than that UNLESS
there's a hysteria in place (or "exuberance" as Greenspan put it) to buy
because prices are rising.

That exuberance is slowly puffing out of the market (I'm amazed,
actually, that some people are still buying like crazy thinking the
market is going to bottom out next month...)

Oops. We're supposed to be bashing Andres sacred Canadian cow.
Sorry... back to the subject at hand:

With high oil and gold prices, we're riding high.

But the US also produces a lot of oil and they can open up the Alaskan oil
fields if they want and it's in a location where it's easy to ship unlike
most of the Canadian or Russian oil.
The US also holds the highest amount of the world's gold reserves.

Yeah, but those are rather dirty I understand requiring cyanide and huge
energy costs to grind up the weak ore.

We also have a huge reserve of shale oil but it's tough to figure out
how to extract it.

For now, sure. And good for Canada, because my relatives living there
are benefiting from it as well. Times change, though.

Si... :-) Eso es? Where's that hole in the border wall senior? :-)

regards,
PolishKnight



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