Herb Kitchen died last week. He was the minister of finance in the early 1990s who brought down the difficult budgets, starting in 1991 that were part of a plan that turned the provincial government around. The deficit at the time was about $300 million and the total budget called
Continue readingTag: public debt
The Sir Robert Bond Papers: Facing the financial wall, again #nlpoli
Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro makes money by making and selling electricity. In 2018, the last year for which we have statistics, Hydro made about 40 gigawatt hours of electricity and sold it for slightly less than a billion dollars. Most of the electricity went to Quebec and most of the
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Bank of Canada to help GNL make payroll #nlpoli
Bank of Canada234 Wellington St, Ottawa The Bank of Canada announced today that it will purchase up to 40% of money market securities with terms to maturity of 12 months or less that are issued directly by Canadian provinces. The Bank of Canada will make the first purchases on Wednesday,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Despite Opposition demands, Alberta NDP says no to risky conservative ideological experiments in its 2017 budget
PHOTOS: Finance Minister Joe Ceci. Below: Interim Progressive Conservative Ric McIver showing off his Three Stooges tie, the sale of which puts the gross in Gross National Product; Opposition Leader Brian Jean; and Alberta Liberal interim Leader David Swann. “Admit it, Alberta, after yesterday afternoon’s Budget Speech was read by
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Prov gov finances headed south #nlpoli
The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is offering its bonds on the American market, according to Bloomberg News. VOCM reported it locally on Wednesday.The provincial government hopes that its high interest rates will attract investors. &nbs…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Fan Klub, Churchill, and taxes – update
As the provincial Conservatives and New Democrats filibuster the levy bill in the House of Assembly that Winston Churchill quote about taxes popped up again.The ones pushing the quote hard on Twitter seem to be mostly charter members of the Danny Willi…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Incrementalists #nlpoli
Today is budget day.There’s been lots of speculation flying around, most of it a confirmation that people have little real information about anything. If you have been paying attention, though, you can probably make a fairly good guess at what Thursday…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Sir Robert Bond Papers 2016-03-18 04:30:00
The deficit for 2015 will be a record.We know that because of comments at the House of Assembly by Premier Dwight Ball and finance minister Cathy Bennett.News media are reporting that as “raising the province’s borrowing capacity” but that’s not quite …
Continue readingMichal Rozworski: Fiscal policy for the left, or Corbyn vs Mulcair on deficits
The question of deficits dominated a lot of the economic debate in Canada during the 2015 federal election and even today. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party introduced a new fiscal policy last week that, on surface, appears to mirror the NDP’s anti-deficit stance from the 2015 campaign. Looking closer, however, Labour’s policy diverges quite substantially and […]
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Things are THAT bad #nlpoli
David Thompson is an independent economist in the same way that Jerry Earle and Wayne Lucas are independent human resource consultants.But the problem isn’t that CBC couldn’t make a factual statement in the first three words of a news story. Nor is…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: If we dither, we die. #nlpoli
by Chuck Furey________________”Indecision becomes decision with time” someone once said.The current fiscal nightmare in Newfoundland and Labrador is real.One only need compare the amount of borrowing in 1933 (34%} to the borrowing today (30%) as a shar…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Politicians and Public Debt #nlpoli
Remember the debt clock?Finance minister Tom Marshall went around the province during that year’s budget consultation – now “rebranded” as “engagement” – with this big electric counter that purported to show how much interest on taxpayers…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Newfoundland government finance, 1832 to 1949 #nlpoli
Before Newfoundlanders stopped governing themselves in the early winter of 1934, they’d run a sometimes arduous course.Newfoundland gained a limited form of self-government in 1832 and in 1855 gained Responsible Government. That gave control of…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Will DBRS re-do its rating for Newfoundland and Labrador? #nlpoli
Premier Paul Davis was proud of the fact that a bond rating agency had confirmed the province’s credit rating.Curiously, he never told anyone which rating agency it was and, as it seems, very few if any news outlets reported on the release issued…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Let’s hear it for the Fraser Institute geniuses #nlpoli
A year after Kathy Dunderdale left office, the Fraser Institute said she was one of the best fiscal managers of all the Premiers in Canada.Provincial Conservatives repeated the story anywhere and everywhere they could, just as they had done the other t…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Metrics #nlpoli
Telegram editor Russell Wangersky tried on Monday to put the government’s financial mess into some shape that people could understand.The simple fact, to put a shortfall of $2 billion into perspective, is that if the provincial government wanted to c…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Bridge to Ottawa #nlpoli
Premier Dwight Ball said everything is on the table to deal with the massive financial problem facing his administration.And then, in a string of year-end interviews, Ball immediately took everything off the table. No cuts to spending as that wou…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Essence #nlpoli
The Telegram has been running a series this week on the number of communities in the province where people can’t drink the water supplied by their local municipality. Regular readers will know the issue as it first came up here in 2009, in 2011, and in 2013. A couple of
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Where is Canada’s mild Keynesian alternative?
You know something is up when the social democrats are trailing the centrist pundits on the economy. The space for a just a mild Keynesian alternative in Canada is wide open. Such an alternative, however, needs a political rather than merely a technocratic push. Here is a fragment of a piece
Continue readingMichal Rozworski » Political Eh-conomy: Where is Canada’s mild Keynesian alternative?
You know something is up when the social democrats are trailing the centrist pundits on the economy. The space for a just a mild Keynesian alternative in Canada is wide open. Such an alternative, however, needs a political rather than merely a technocratic push. Here is a fragment of a piece
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