Global recession
We are getting closer to hearing it coming from official sources: we are in recession.
Duh! Like we did not know it. When companies are downsizing at an alarming level, when our cost of living skyrocketed, how could anybody believe that ‘we were doing all right’? We are not and finally our government it’s going to admit it officially.
The U.S. credit crunch misery went global. Japan was among the first countries to admit the defeat, followed recently by some European countries.
A few days ago Ireland tried to stop the financial crisis offering assurance that all the savings are safe with them. Normally, the rest of the Europe expressed outrage over the move. Fast forward a few days after that, Greece followed thorough, then Germany.
Now France and the U.K. were caught with their pants down after the German Chancellor unilaterally tried to save her country’s financial system forgetting all about the EU alliance. In times of crisis it looks like it’s every county at its own.
So far France, Ireland and Denmark admitted being in recession. It’s expected that Spain, Germany, the U.K. and other countries to come up with the same announcement.
Canadian economists are still optimistic that the country will not get so much down like the U.S. If the U.S. economy is thought to recover in about 5 years, the Canadian one is expected to recover sooner than that, in about a year. It remains to be seen.
Also the full picture is really gleam, there is a silver lining: China is in the same mess- plus they have the food scandal to deal with, meaning that maybe some of the outsourcing it’s coming back home (yeah, wishful thinking) and the Bank of Canada will cut interest rates – forecast being one full percentage point.
That means it will be less burden to pay the credit cards we had to use to purchase materials for home renovations.
China keeping the lid on the number of sick kids
The Chinese government decided not to disclose the number of sick kids (melamine tainted milk) because according to them, it’s not an infectious disease, meaning that it’s not mandatory to make the number public.
As in… it’s a matter of national security or what?
Probably the truth is so terrible that it’s better not to tell anything. The damage is already done anyway. In the mean time, now that the melamine has been discovered, they decided to try to eliminate more people with arsenic.
Over a hundred people have been poisoned after drinking water contaminated with arsenic.
Chinese products have been under suspicion for quite some time. It’s true that I thought it would be limited to toys and in my naivety I gave them the benefit of having some consciousness with regards to food.
Now my confidence has gone completely down the drain and I am even more concerned especially after reading an article in the Vancouver Sun stipulating that manufacturers of food are not forced to disclose the country of origin for the ingredients used to make anything from juice to food.
As an example let’s take the banal apple juice. I would have sworn that it’s made in North America. And indeed it is, as in … packaged here. Part of the raw material (apple puree concentrate) may come from many countries, China including.
Apple juice is a very popular drink among all people. I wonder how many of us would start thinking about using again that juice extractor that is collecting only dust these days?
I don’t understand all these economic laws and I am most likely to believe that it’s rather a political game.
Canada does not need to import anything made with Chinese milk. We have enough cows here. And maybe it’s time to review that stupid quota the dairy farms are forced to follow and not to throw milk to the sewage just because some greedy idiots want to keep the price of milk at a certain level. Or it’s because China lends money and in return they impose the dynamic of the exports. Or it’s because we have Chinese entrepreneurs living happily in Canada, with the same business philosophy of ‘who cares how many people die if we make money’.