Yuku free message boards

by Harold Chorney, John Hotson, and Mario Seccareccia

Quote:

"Governments these days find it easy to defend cuts in services and programs. All they have to do is point to their annual deficits and their total accumulated debts. (As of March, 1994, Canada's public debt was about $546 billion.) This public debt provides the politicians with a convenient excuse for cutting spending or raising taxes. Or both. «We're broke,» they tell us plaintively. «We can't afford to increase public services, or even keep them at their present level.»

A lesson of war

"As the deep recession dragged into 1992, Finance Minister Don Mazankowski said he couldn't do anything about it. His hands were tied, he said. The federal government was broke. The cupboard was bare. The deficit and accumulated national debt were so enormous that his first priority had to be to reduce them - even if that meant prolonging the recession and making it even worse.

"So his budget contained almost nothing to revive the sick economy. With interest payments on the debt gobbling up one-third of tax revenue, his response was to keep taxes high and axe more public services and agencies. Like Martin Luther before him, Mazankowski in effect proclaimed: «Here stand I. I cannot do otherwise.»

"But it doesn't take an economist to see that in fact he could. All you have to do is imagine what the government would do if it got involved in another Gulf War - or if that war were still raging. Would the Finance Minister have brought down the same kind of budget? Would he have said, «We'd like to keep on fighting, but we're broke, so we're calling our troops back»? Not on your life!

"Did Canada surrender half way through World War II because the national debt had grown even larger than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)? Of course not! Somehow the extra money was found. If it wasn't by raising taxes or borrowing from the private banks, why, the Bank of Canada simply created all the money the government needed - and at near-zero interest rates, too!

"When World War II ended, the national debt relative to the national income was more than twice as large as it is now. But was the country ruined? Did we have to declare national bankruptcy? Far from it! Instead, Canada's economy boomed and the country prospered for most of the post-war period.

The Bank of Canada has failed in its duty

"Why isn't the same thing happening today? Why was a much larger national debt shrugged off in 1945, while today's much smaller debt (as a percentage of GDP) is being used as an excuse to let the economy stagnate?

"The answer can be found at the Bank of Canada. During the war, and for 30 years afterward, the government could borrow what it needed at low rates of interest, because the government's own bank produced up to half of all the new money. That forced the private banks to keep their interest rates low, too.

"Since the mid-1970s, however, the Bank of Canada, with government consent, has been creating less and less of the new money, while letting the private banks create more and more. Today «our» bank creates a mere 2% of each year's new money supply, while allowing the private banks to gouge the government - and of course you and me, as well - with outrageously high interest rates. And it is these extortionate interest charges that are the principal cause of the rapid escalation of the national debt. If the federal government were paying interest at the average levels that prevailed from the 1930s to the mid-1970s, it would now be running an operating surplus of about $13 billion!"

The updated version (January, 1996) of the pamphlet expresses the same ideas:

"The Bank of Canada was established in 1935 by an Act of Parliament. In its legislative mandate, it is directed to promote economic growth and employment, as well as preserving the value of the Canadian dollar.

"Shortly after the Bank opened its doors, it was faced with the bankruptcy of provincial governments due to the Depression. Interpreting its mandate widely, as it is supposed to do, it made precedent-setting loans to restore the finances of Manitoba. Generous loans to other provinces followed.

"World War II found Canada ready and determined to act in the Allied cause. The war effort of the federal government was financed through enormous deficits and very low interest rates brought about by the Bank of Canada. At war's end, the national debt stood at about 120% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), nearly double the level of today. Yet Canada went on to enjoy the greatest period of economic growth in its history...