Broken store windows have been repaired, burned out cars and debris removed. Security barriers that turned much of downtown Toronto into a fortress are gone, and so has a small army of police and security agents. The hooligans have decamped.
To everyone's relief, the G8/G20 economic summit held in Toronto and a lake resort two hours north is over.
An army of police and bands of rioters have been replaced by one million visitors feting Toronto's annual Gay Pride extravaganza, the world's largest gay jamboree. Watching this sober, conservative city dissolve into a gay bacchanal is always entertaining and surreal.
Sustained immigration transformed "Toronto the Good" from a dour Scots Presbyterian backwater into the world's most multicultural metropolis of over four million in which racial and ethnic groups co-exist in tranquility. Cantonese, Mandarin and Punjabi are now the most spoken languages in Canada after English and French.
American visitors look with awe on Toronto's clean streets, polite citizens, and services that are a model of good urban management.
The late actor, Peter Ustinov, was once asked his opinion of Toronto. After a moment's thought, he replied, "New York City -- run by the Swiss."
The G8/G20 Toronto economic summit cost a staggering $1.1 billion, the most expensive economic meeting in anyone's memory. That's over $500 million per day.
This gold-plated summit was designed to boost the standing of Canada's unpopular, prime minister, Stephen Harper who runs a shaky minority government.
When politicians get in trouble at home, they invariably turn to international affairs to burnish their faded images. Harper, a born-again Christian fundamentalist from Alberta is closely allied to Israel's hard-right government and a disciple of George Bush.
Harper is trying to give himself the image of a senior international statesman and basking in the glory of Canada's banks that rode through the 2007-2008 financial crisis with flying colors because they sensibly refused to follow America's financial debauchery and chicanery.
These days, world leaders have become caught up in frantic rounds of unending political and economic meetings that are as exhausting as unproductive and costly.
All the work for these meetings is accomplished in advance by staffs using phone, email, fax and video conferencing. The carefully-cultivated notion that presidents and prime ministers can fly into a city, meet around a large table for two days, and resolve thorny, complex economic and political issues is a public relations myth.
Heads of states attend these summits for two good reasons unconnected to the actual agreements achieved.
First, such meetings give voters the impression their leaders are actually making progress in dealing with the global financial/economic crisis. Activity is equated with achievement.
Second, safety in numbers. It is by now perfectly clear that savage cuts must be made to the bloated budgets of the G8 industrial nations. The debt binge of the past decade left a mountain of dangerous obligations for private parties and governments.
The time to "de-leverage," as Wall Street calls puncturing the debt bubble, is at hand. The heart-stopping scare of 2007-2008, and risks that a global financial melt-down could again occur, are forcing most governments to slash spending.
Many major European governments have announced plans for deep budget cuts to bring their debt loads down, it is hoped, to a sustainable 3% of GDP.
This is causing voters to scream and, in the case of beleaguered Greece and Spain, demonstrate and riot. Politicians, caught between threats of financial melt-down and angry voters, seek the safety of numbers in these economic summits, adopting a common front they hope will convince voters that slashing spending is what everyone is doing.
The International Monetary Fund used to perform this helpful mission by mandating spending cuts that politicians did not have the courage to enact. What the G8 really need, of course, is a short-term economic dictator who will slash spending and ignore ensuing protests.
France offers a particularly interesting example of the current financial squeeze. While vowing budget cuts and adding only two years to its absurdly low retirement age of 58-60 years (or 50 in the case of certain professions), the Sarkozy government has been dithering and coy about making really painful cuts. France's total private and government debt has reached over 300% of GDP. Spending cuts are urgent.
But 55% of French workers are directly or indirectly employed by the government. For labor public unions, "l'etat, c'est nous."
As a result, cutting down these public sector unions that dominate and often terrorize France risks political suicide for whatever government holds power.
In fact, public sector unions are now the biggest problem facing the G8. These unions became bloated during the days of credit addiction, when cheap loans created a bubble economy. Today, they can no longer be afforded, but their power remains immense.
So G8 leaders are also trying to form a common front against these entrenched public unions that are undermining the economies in which they operate. Greece offers the most striking example.
But the biggest of all the debtors, the United States, was notably understated at the Toronto conference. President Barack Obama flew in on Air Force One, a Boeing 747, at vast expense and much air pollution, to urge higher spending (and thus more debt) to stimulate economies. European nations rejected this plan by debt-addicted America. Treating the malady of too much debt with more debt does not make sense -- except to the hopelessly addicted.
The biggest fear at Toronto was that while Washington fulminates against China, it was doing nothing to curb its mammoth debt, and continuing to inflate the debt bubble, thus endangering the world economy.
In the US, government debt per person, calculates the Economist, has soared from $16,000 per person in 2001 to $34,000 today. Government debt has reached a frightening 360% of US GDP.
In Britain, government debt trebled in the same period. Britain's new Tory government has announced plans to slash some $9 billion of spending.
But as the US economy continues to stumble, and risk another fall back into severe recession, President Obama could not summon the political courage or Congressional votes to substantially cut government spending or to curtail the parasitic drain on the economy of America's bloated financial industry which has become the real power in Washington.
Obama failed to cut America's gigantic, trillion-dollar military budget, which represents close to 50% of total global military spending. Instead, he increased it.
The U.S. is financing its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (now costing $7 billion monthly), and growing military operations in Pakistan and Yemen, on borrowed money, leaving the bill for the next generation of unlucky taxpayers.
Add another $33 billion this year for Obama's Afghan "surge." A nation addicted to financial gambling and war will have a very hard time bringing itself back to fiscal reality.
The world's battered economy can't be healed until its biggest debtor reforms its ways -- but there is no sign this will happen anytime soon.
To fix the problem, you first identify the problem. What has put us in our current situation - was it governent borrowing or Wall Street fraud?
While I agree we should have never cut taxes for the rich, created huge tax cuts and loopholes for the richest corporations and wasted $3 Trillion in Iraq, the answer is not to reduce employment during a recession. It is to reinstate the fairer taxes of earlier times, get out of our needless foreign wars, close tax loopholes for corporations, and spend money to create JOBS for Americans.
The benefit to the economy is zero. So if corporations aren't spending or investing and the government is cutting back from whence does the economy grow?
A recession is an economy starving for money. So you guys think that denying a starving economy of food, its fuel to survive, is going to bring it back to health?
One thing is almost certain, Europe because of it's austerity measures will hit another wave of deeper recession if not go completely off the cliff and the US is also going to take a major slump because even if we wanted to stimulate the economy now with a cash infusion by the time it got through committee and out into the streets it would be too late.
what will probably happen is the Republicans will try to block all efforts to stimulate the economy until they regain power. Then they will pump money into the economy in an attempt to revive it. Hopefully it's not too late by then.
But, investment requires money, and less money does not equal more money.
It's not bad enough that corporations try to find every loophole they can not to pay taxes. Now they have congress men/women helping them to bypass laws to bloat the budget even more.
These people should be investigated for criminal activity as group trying to defraud the government. And the congresswoman for selling her votes. Not to mention being removed from the appropriations committee for conflict of interest or bribery whichever you prefer. Gross missuse of power.
I have grown weary of the France bashing from the right wing, virtually none of whom have even ever visited France. They get their wisdom from the crazies on Faux News and believe it comes from God.
You have to also realize this particular writer is obviously ignorant of economics. Ten year Treasury Bill rates are below 3%. If the theory that you should buy low and sell high has any meaning whatsoever, American should be borrowing now and spending to create jobs.
1) I don't know any anarchists
2) I am not aware of the "shiny new police issued boots"
Would you like to teach us about the "shiny new police issued boots'?
Are they comfy?
1) Europe sees need for austerity (i.e. responsibility) and is taking the first, painful steps.
The only other way out is via debt default, and that would "really" be bad.
2) Obama/Krugman says austerity now is bad idea, they argue that you CAN fix problem of too much debt by creating more debt. Pigs can fly too.
3) Europe tells Obama/Krugman where to go, don't let the door hitcha.
Europe: 1 O/K: 0
They gave Obama a peace prize even though he is presiding over 2 wars.
Maybe they will give Madoff a nobel prize in economics!
1)Health care cost inflation
2)Military spending
Stimulus spending is GOOOOOOD. Yes you can help fix debt with more debt if you are spending to lower unemployment, because employed people pay taxes. Got it, good. K.
So let's get to work employing some of them to figure out how to fix health care cost inflation.
The debt problem and stimulus spending are two separate things. It's easy to get confused. One must do the math.
If we spend money now to create good jobs, particularly in the renewable energy and electric car fields, that will solve our unemployment problem, our balance of trade problem, and wean us off our addiction to oil.
If the stimulous money had been used to create jobs or had they passed out checks to people the economy would have made a quick recovery.
But no, the money had to go to the banks and credit card companies who still cry broke. They only want business as usual. The american public to be their atm machine and no accountibility.
The foreclosures were created by the government and banking institutions who preyed on the worst credit risks for their own advantage.
Keep giving the money and tax breaks to the banks and corporations-no one I know will use a credit card or buy a home.
Homes should be about 1/2 of what they are going for so that is why they are sitting on the market.
No recovery because of catering to banks and the globe.
On the other hand, the government could just continue to spend. I think the unemployment rate will hover around 9-10% like has been. The issue is, what are the consequences for all this spending? We print our own money and printing out our debt is a road to hyperinflation. Could our interest rates on our debts increase if our moodys rating is downgraded? That could affect our ability to borrow money.
The government can save jobs by spending or even create temporary jobs. i.e. bridge/road repair and census workers. The can not however create private sector jobs. Even B.O. knows that the private sector is the driver of the economy.
As I said, this are not fact based statements. Just my opinion. There is no easy decision by our government. I don't think we can avoid a deeper recession or even depression though.