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Don’t let our financial history repeat

Letter to the editor
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To the Editor,

There is a saying, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

Remember the great financial crash of 2007-08? Nobody? But you should.

This was the time that, due to a combination of greed, stupidity and a misplaced faith in the free market, American banksters virtually brought Wall Street to its knees. This didn’t just effect the U.S. economy, but spread out all around the globe!

So, what to do? Well, no waiting for the free market tooth fairy to straighten this whole monstrous mess out. The American taxpayer picked up the tab in the billions, one might say. Actually, the whole caper of 2007-08 is said to have cost some US$15 trillion dollars.

The grateful banksters and financial whiz kids took the bailout money, bought new corporate jets, paid themselves huge bonuses, (for making a total mess of things) and the foreclosures on properties went on!

A similar thing occurred here in Canada where Canadian banks were saved from their own stupidity by Jean Chretien, who refused to let them mega-size or loosen Canada’s banking regulations.

Oh, horror, we’ll fall behind the rest of the world, especially the United States where the Clinton regime had cancelled Glass-Steagall, which had governed U.S. financial affairs from the dirty ’30s. Oh, free us from these financial chains.

As Chretien pointed out, the Japanese had let their banks balloon out of control and it hadn’t done them any good.

Then the Harper government, during the financial crisis, gave Canada’s banks as estimated $114 billion to buy up some “bad paper.” Now, I’m not saying that this was the wrong thing, but the grateful Canadian banksters dreamt up a scheme to bring in workers from India, have their present employees train them, then they lay their present employees off. What sick mind could think this one up?

And now, it’s the turn of Canada’s airlines, especially Air Canada, to dip into the cookie jar. Of the some $5.8 billion earmarked to keep the airlines afloat, refunds for tickets unused, etc., Air Canada has appropriated some $10 million for executive bonuses?

A late news flash, evidently some 20 per cent of the upper airlines executives are going to return their bonuses. Not 100 per cent, but a little shaming, as it did with Canada’s banksters, has given them pause for thought. A good thing, don’t you think?

Dennis Peacock,

Clearwater, B.C.