Thursday, November 11, 2010

Smack the US Around a Little Stephen

I feel a little betrayed by Stephen Harper's comments defending Quantitative Easing in the US. The US plan to print an additional $600 Billion can only lead to a further devaluation of the US dollar and continued inflation in commodity prices, which will move through the rest of the economy at an uncomfortably quick speed. The weaker US dollar, gives every US company a competitive advantage against Canadian companies and the impact has been felt for the past several years as the Americans have allowed their dollar to plummet in value.

Stephen Harper reportedly said:

Under the circumstances, the quantitative easing policy is in the short term the only option available for the Federal Reserve and I'm not sure anyone else has provided any compelling argument as to what alternative policy they would pursue, at least in the short term.

Well let's try this alternative. Do nothing. The American government has run up a massive deficit and contributed to a destabilizing of world currency markets by last year's quantitative easing. Stock markets have increased, commodities prices have risen so now it's time to let the American economy adjust gradually rather than start a wave of massive inflation in the medium term and shut down more Canadian businesses in the short term.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Patrick,

I completely agree that Harper should have at least given some respect to the numberous Canadian industries that have struggled for the past 5+ years due largely to a rapidly strengthening currency. Harper is right - in that the righteous indignation of China and many other developing countries have effectively had a large percentage of their continous decade long growth covered by the USA alone. In other words, both side have been scoundrels, merly performing different tactics on each other.

In the meantime, here is a well written and very current article regarding what the effects of QE2 will most likely bring:
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/alert-QE-lit-fuse/47589