(no subject)

The best quote on Canadian Finance Minister's appeal to corporations to voluntarily lower their Canadian prices now that the Canadian dollar is the highest it's been since the mid-nineteenth century belongs to lefty economist Jim Stanford:

"If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, then voluntarism is the last refuge of a finance minister — especially one so philosophically committed to the principles of self-interest. I am a socialist, and even I am not so idealistic as to suppose economic policies founded on appeals to charity will work very well. It takes regulation, incentives and structure to push people and institutions to change their behaviour, not moral suasion."

Free trade was a disaster for Canada -- it would've been an unmitigated disaster if our low dollar hadn't permitted us to develop certain niche markets in manufacturing and film and so on.

Now those niche markets are liquidating because of the high dollar, what's left of our economy is crumbling, and the US has proven over and over again that it won't honour the Free Trade agreement the few times it would've provided us with an advantage (such as on softwood lumber).

If there's a lesson to be drawn from the economic collapses brought about by the rising Canadian dollar, it's that it's high time we scrapped Free Trade. The sooner we reintroduce tariffs, the more of our jobs we can save from the incredible inflating loonie.

The idea that unregulated trade was the cure for all ills and that tariffs were evil was a religion back in the 1980s, it's an even more improbable religion now, and we really need to develop some scepticism before we destroy ourselves for a bad idea.

Iamb, I said, to no one there...

On a completely other topic, nothing will make a poet feel more like a manic-depressive than writing a piece heavy on the spondees (--) and pyrrhics (//), rather than the nice, safe, boy-next-door that is the iamb (-/) or even that invert, the trochee (/-).

Yes, I'm trying to master metre, in preparation for working on my long-ignored poetry. I know that most respected poets these days turn up their nose at the stuff, but I strongly suspect that's why the literate general public stopped buying current poetry about a hundred years ago.