Wednesday-Night

Belated Happy Thanksgiving to one and all and warm wishes to our Jewish friends as they celebrate Sukkot.

We hope that in counting your blessings you remembered to thank She Who Must Be Obeyed that the Canadian election campaign does not last for 18 months - 2 years, at least not officially. It just seems that long. Whatever the outcome of Tuesday’s election, we can also count our blessings that Canada has Elizabeth May (and a substantial number of attractive, intelligent women candidates in all parties) and not Sarah Palin, which says something about the intelligence of the electorate and the quality of the candidates in this country.  It has been a fascinating process observing the almost-daily rise and fall of political fortunes.
By Wednesday Night, we will know the outcome and about whom and what we will be complaining for the next while. Leaving us free to watch - or not (we can always wait for the SNL version) - the third and final presidential debate while we wonder why Obama has produced an elaboration of his economic plan and John McCain sees no need to do the same. [Ah, but this was written on Monday; on Tuesday we discover that McCain Unveils New Economic Proposals . Oh.
The drama of the U.S. election pales before the drama of the financial crisis which has grown from an American bailout problem (Do not miss SNL on the bailout)  to a global issue which, as Stratfor points out  led to a  weekend  that began with meetings among the finance ministers of the G-7, followed by a meeting of finance ministers from the G-20, the group of industrial and emerging powers that together constitute 90 percent of the world’s economy; plus meetings with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, concluding  on Sunday with a summit of the eurozone countries, where, miracle of miracles, they opted for the UK model (de Gaulle must be spinning in his grave).
This observation is the perfect segue to our guest this Wednesday, Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay and his wife Carole, and to bring to your attention his most recent article Anatomy of the American Financial Crisis: How It is Turning into a Worldwide Crisis wherein he says in conclusion: “we may ask if it is possible to avoid a repetition of the U.S. Great Depression of the 1930s or the more recent Japan’s protracted recession of the 1990s, both the result of a similar severe banking crisis? The answer is yes, if the vicious cycle of asset price decline, banking credit crunch and money supply contraction can be avoided, or, at the very least, stopped and reversed. —In economics, as in medicine, it is never too late to do the right thing.”
Another segue: doing the right thing in economics … we are sure that there will be argument from some Wednesday Nighters, but we are absolutely delighted that Paul Krugman has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. We wanted to post congratulations on the NYT site, but the comments had closed – there were SO many.  We didn’t spot a single negative. Several suggested Krugman as the next Secretary of the Treasury –  we think we prefer him in the role of Loyal Opposition.