Today is the fifth anniversary of Stephen Harper’s electoral victory that ended 13 years of Liberal party rule. It’s worth recalling that this is a man who, before coming to power, once described Canada as a, “Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term”. Such a statement offered a...
Reading the Austrian literature, one often comes across the claim that the US dollar has lost 95% of its value since the Fed’s inception in 1913. A Canadian reading that might well ask how much our dollar has been cheapened since the Bank of Canada (BoC) was founded in 1935. AÂ good question...
That is the title of the upcoming seminar being hosted by the Institute of Liberal Studies. If you are in the Toronto area this Friday, you are more than welcome to attend. Running from 10 am to 330 pm, the seminar will be take place in  Hart House (Music Room) at the University of Toronto....
Coming across this paper by George Selgin, William D. Lastrapes, and Lawrence H. White, one can’t help wondering how the Bank of Canada (B0C) would fare under similar scrutiny. One suspects the BoC’s record, both in terms of keeping inflation under control and minimizing the economy’s volatility, would come to sight as...
So 2011 is well under way, and January is in full force. Snow storms, frigid temperatures, and endless rainfall will plague Canadians for at least the next couple of months. But while you’re hiding from the elements near the warm glow of your computer screens, why not study Austrian theory at the...
The Bank of Canada (BoC) is scheduled to release its latest statement on interest rates today. It’s widely expected that the Mark Carney led central bank will keep its benchmark overnight lending rate at 1%. That would be a poor decision. As we’ve argued in previous blogs (back on Dec. 13 & Jan. 7), the...
Clearly, the federal government does not want the Bank of Canada (BoC) to raise interest rates. Yet it also realizes that Mark Carney, the governor of the BoC, is correct in worrying about the growing debt that’s been taken on by Canadian households. So it’s trying to finesse these two considerations –...
Ten years ago today, one of the greatest information resources on the Internet — perhaps the greatest – was born. Without commissioning a single expert, the English version of Wikipedia has grown to encompass 3.5 million articles. That number goes up to 17 million if you include all the other language editions of the online...
Power impairs our capacity to view others as fellow humans — that’s according to a newly published study by Joris Lammers & Diederik Stapel, “Power Increases Dehumanization” in the January 2011 issue of Group Processes & Intergroup Relations (HT once again to Kevin Lewis at National Affairs) It follows that the more power we...
Will 2011 bring a federal election to Canada? Hard to say, but we may now have a wedge issue that instigates a return to the polls. Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals are spearheading a campaign to rescind planned cuts to Canada’s corporate tax rate. Having already come down from 28% during the Chretien-Martin years...
Very promising news — the Prime Minister has today announced his intention to campaign for the elimination of subsidies to political parties whenever the next election is held. Why this is a good idea is explained in a previous blog. Currently, each of the parties receives approximately $2 per year for each...
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