One of the better articles of Stephen Harper’s disastrous ‘economic stewardship’ from an economic website.
Even in a world full of “posers”, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is in a league of his own. I was first introduced to Harper’s penchant for grandiose claims when he was briefly interviewed while sitting in the stands of a hockey game I was watching on television. In that interview he referred to himself as “a hockey historian”.
The next time I saw Stephen Harper interviewed (this time in a serious “news” interview) he described himself as an “economist”. Presumably, if he was ever interviewed while attending the Calgary Stampede he would have claimed to be “a champion bull-rider”. However, knowing a couple of things about economics myself, I’m most interested in Harper’s pretension of being an “economist”.
When Stephen Harper was first elected, he inherited an economy that was the envy of the entire industrialized world. Canada had a large budget surplus (one of the few nations on Earth to be running budget surpluses), a large trade surplus, a large current account surplus, and the economy was getting stronger every year.
Today, as of the latest measurements, Canada has one of the weakest economies out of all industrialized nations. It’s budget surplus is gone – replaced with record-setting deficits. It’s trade surplus is gone. It’s current account surplus is gone – and the current account deficit is growing each quarter.
This is just the opening. Read the whole thing.
