The United States Needs Canada to Survive

We have been pointing at the problems of the concentration of decision-making quite a bit recently, but we feel it bears repeating. Much blame for the 2007 Depression can be placed on, for example, the U.S. Federal Government allowing the super-huge American banks to become... well, super-huge. It gave those banks, and therefore their respective managements, so much power that the bad decisions made by the banks had global implications. The rest, as they say, is history.

Now the United States is hurtling down the first dip of the 2007 Depression, and the programmes for a quick "recovery" back to the consumer economy are only opium-induced hallucinations. In our opinion, the only real way to bring the Depression to a close is the old-fashioned way: liquidation, down-sizing, and reformation. If we were the optimistic type, we would suggest that the Government is running out of time to allow this. Realistically, though, we fear that the point-of-no-return is several economic pot-holes in the past.

So... where does that leave the average American citizen? Nowhere comfortable is our reply; the Citizenry is faced with a mind-numbingly-large (and exponentially growing) national debt, the fallout from the imploded consumer economy, and a world in a Depression. Whether or not the Citizenry is aware of this is another matter; the important point is that the United States probably will not be able to bring itself out of the 2007 Depression by its lonesome anymore.

Hence, the U.S. will need friends. Specifically, friends with usable industrial capacity, a less-unsound currency, a less-irresponsible Federal Government, and a Citizenry with a healthy work ethic. Bonus points for having a border with the U.S., as well as being a major trading partner.

We would suggest Canada: it is the only functional country which borders the U.S., and it offers the qualities we listed above, more-or-less. Canadian Citizens have their problems, to be sure, but Canada has not done many important things: the Federal Government hasn't been usurped by the super-huge banks; it isn't running massive wars of occupation; it hasn't annihilated its cities and industrial capacity in favour of strip malls and hair salons, it is the U.S.'s largest trading partner.

It seems, however, that the U.S. Federal Government is intent on de-friending Canada. We'll write more on this topic tomorrow.

Read part two here.