It’s not something that comes across mainstream media often, so I’m relieved to hear someone admitting that the Iraq war was really only about the oil.
Here’s the full story from Bill Moyers.
Now, for those of you who were following this story, you’ll know that this ‘news’ came out a couple of weeks ago. I have to admit that I’ve been delinquent with my posts, mainly in an effort to get my book climax out (read here for more details).
This story is several weeks old, but the message is still important: biofuels are starving people.
Governments are quickly reassessing their biofuel strategies because they realize the effect that this policy direction has the world’s less-advantaged. I heard a story about how the TTC is going to reduce its purchase of new biofuel buses for this reason and how Dalton McGuinty of the Ontario Liberals was reevaluating their fuel replacement strategy.
Of course, studies like this still fail to account for the impact that the US dollar has on all commodities. Last week, most commodities started to tumble in value. Normally, when one, maybe two products experience a shift in price by more than 10% within a very short time-frame, you’d look for basic fundamentals like supply or demand shocks that would affect those prices.
However, when we’re talking about almost all commodities reversing their upward trend, there must be something else at play. The solution: they’re all priced in US dollars and the US dollar took a jump last week when Bernanke declared that inflation must be kept under control.
I truly believe that this kind of international commodity market hegemony is unprecedented and the world would do itself a favour if we found a different way to evaluate the worth of a product, beyond using the US dollar as a proxy.
Ideally, it would be a basket of currencies that reflected the true worth of international goods and services, but which currencies would those be?
The cost of not acting is obvious. The more the US economy crumbles, the more the rest of the world will be subject to a rash of ‘interflation’, international price shocks that are solely related to the tumbling value of the US dollar.
The bad news: as the value of the dollar decreases (which it will start to do again soon as efforts are made to revive their economy), the changes become exponentially different. For example, when the US dollar was trading on par with the Euro, a $0.05 change might translate to a $2.00 change in the price of oil, other things being equal.
When the dollar tumbles to $0.25 vis-a-vis the Euro (which I predict it will once most of the financial crisis finally comes to light), a $0.05 translates to a 20% change in price. Since oil is currently trading in the $120-$140 range, 20% of this range translates to a $24-$28 change in the price of oil.
is that kind of change in price a severe shock or poorly planned international pricing system?
As a marketer, I always find this kind of stuff interesting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfwZNomxsNg
It’d be crazy … if it didn’t work on at least half the population.
I’ve been toying with a couple of ideas related to net neutrality in Canada and I’ve developed a few that I’d like you to provide feedback on.
Basically, the background info is this:
What I propose is that the official mandate of the CBC be expanded to include basic Internet services. We should be aggressive with this goal and go so far as to suggest that any Canadian should be able to get unfettered access to DSL services whenever they want without the expectation of being limited in the sites or locations that they can visit (obvious exclusions exist, including porn, gambling, etc).
The CBC has been very innovative with the delivery of some of its content, but its mandate of sharing this content with Canadians is repeatedly threatened by Canada’s telecom giants by throttling and other restrictions placed on services like BitTorrent and other P2P programs.
It’s this threat that necessitates an alternative.
The $4.25 billion generated from the wireless auction should be used to finance this pursuit. It would have two angles:
1. Develop of a ‘pipe’ to accommodate the CBC internet access.
2. Support of Canadian-made online media
With the first item, building a pipe on to the existing one (which is mostly owned and developed by Bell Canada and a number of other private ISPs) would be very impractical because you’d wind up paying more in access fees and ‘renting’ the existing infrastructure.
So … here’s a crazy idea: we contract with power utilities (most of which are publicly owned) and deliver DSL through them. Haven’t heard of Power Line Communications (PLC)? Here’s a little article with Wikipedia to whet your whistle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line_communication
Once the DSL problem is solved, any Canadian would be able to set up an account, access the Internet, without threat of speed reduction or other limitations.
Following that, the goal would be to foster and encourage Canadian content. This is easy: there are thousands of blogs, ezines and other sites out there that have never received funding but should. The only caveat: any publication, company or organization that has received Federal funding either from Heritage Canada or the CRTC for TV or print (or even online) is not eligible for new funding.
Obviously, such a program would never come to fruition if the Harper government is in charge, but maybe if we support someone that’s bold enough to pursue this initiative and spend money on Canada rather than tax breaks for non-Canadian companies, we’d all be much better off.
What are your thoughts?
Barack Obama is visiting the world’s most important heads of state, including the leaders of Israel, Germany, France, England and even dropping in on countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and other smaller countries.
It’s unlikely that he’ll be paying Stephen Harper and his friends a visit any time in the near future. The near-slanderous release of comments from Conservative friends back when Obama was just a candidate for the Presidential race will back-fire on the Conservatives in a monstrous way (if they haven’t already). When Barack is elected in November (no if in my mind – McCain has too much Bush on his hands), the conservatives will be on his hit list.
He seems like an upright person, but it’s likely that his cabinet will not have any time for Canadian politicians, unless they’re people that are hell-bent on getting rid of Harper and his gang. It’s conceivable that he’ll implement a series of harsh penalties against the Tar Sands and bring forth a number of trade restrictions that will negatively affect the Canadian economy but protect the US.
He’ll also elevate the brand of ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ (hopefully) and will most likely offer significant indirect support for the Liberals and maybe even the NDP. Dion and Layton would be smart to place a call or even make a summer visit to Barack when he gets back to show how chummy they are with him. He has momentum and these other two leaders need to absorb some of that.
Of course, it’s his success that will induce a Canadian election before November 4. The Conservatives will be spending like the Sex in the City cast at a shoe sale. In fact, there are rumours that the Harpies will announce a major spend (to the tune of $7 billion) for Ontario TODAY in a bid to shore up votes before calling an election.
The good news is that the Harpies are finally reacting to the sad state of manufacturing in Ontario. The bad news is that it’s two years too late and the companies that they’ve given our money to in the last two budgets in the form of unprecedented tax cuts have failed to generate new dollars in the Canadian economy in any surmountable and sustainable way. This is what happens when you cut and thrash as opposed to spend and build.
The other bad news is that Ontarians might actually fall for this switch in policy. Jim Flaherty almost single-handedly ruined the reputation of Ontario’s manufacturing economy following his one-man assualt on the Ontario Liberals. Constant talk about how unattractive Ontario is compared to other manufacturing areas had one effect: it discouraged new investment. Now he wants to bail everyone out using our money to get re-elected and it’s shameful, at best.
But to get back to the point … every day that Obama’s in power in 2009 is another day that the Conservatives will lose ground to more liberal perspectives. I know I’m making a big leap in logic that Obama will be more liberal, but feel OK with this conclusion given that anything’s progressive compared to Bush III (McCain).
So … there will be an election in Canada before November 4. And we’ll pay dearly for it in more tax cuts and spending promises that will only benefit a small handful and leave the rest wanting.