I can’t beleive it has been a month already! Happy New Year!

I read somewhere that only 5% of the US population thinks Obama’s appointments are a “sellout”. I am one of those 5%.

I am not at all surprised: The Democrats have not been able to forward a progressive piece of legislation for my entire short life, and I would be foolish to think anything will change, despite having a majority in the house. The Democratic party has a sizeable conservative membership. Good, or bad, this dilutes the party’s resolve on every progressive issue. I guess you could say that the Democrats are their own worse enemy.

McCain got 47% of the popular vote, which means a sizeable portion of the US population thinks the last 8 years turned out well. The defeat of the GOP was not crushing: The gerrymandered voting districts just made it look like a crushing defeat. I am certain the GOP can make this all back, plus more, in 2016 when the financial apocalypse is well over.

The good thing about a depression is that it is ruthless to the dumb, and critical of the corrupt. Finally, the media is starting to report that stock analysts are no better at picking stocks than a monkey:

• stocks with ‘buy’ ratings don’t outperform those with ‘hold’ or ’sell’ ratings. One analysis he conducted suggests the opposite is true

I will be glad when the endless, baseless, “confidence” in the market is gone, and replaced by cold calculating business sense.

As I said before, the Conservatives spend like drunken sailors:

• The Conservative government spent almost $1 billion on consultants in its first two years in office – nearly double what the Liberals spent in a similar time period, a Toronto Star investigation shows.

For me, the wild spending sprees in travel and expenses do not bother me much; I beleive our elected officials can have some benefits for winning thier elections. Anyway, the total bill for those expenses is a very small percentage of the overall government budget.
What bothers me are the order-of-magnitude larger speadning inititives that are purely wasteful. For example:

• …$270 million contract with Resolve Corporation, which was hired to manage the government’s national student loan program. … $6.8 billion, made up of roughly 1.6 million borrowers

This works out to over $84 per borrower, pre year*!! This is an incredible amount of money!! And remember, this is incredible because Resolve Corporation is not managing the loan: the borrower’s bank is.

I know that I solved all my student loan issues by talking to my bank directly. So it is reasonable to assume most other borrows do the same, and the Resolve Corporation is being paid for relatively no work. I call that a sweet deal!

* The previous Liberal government did the same work for $6.90 per borrower per year.

Steven Harper did ask for a prorougation of Parliament. In retrospect, the asking for prorougation does not necessarily conflict with my theory that Harper wants to loose government control during this economic crisis: Actually, he may use this time to keep running the government apparati into the ground so his soon-to-govern opponents have a much harder time dealing with the crisis.

Furthermore, I am dismayed that the GG would grant a prorougation, but that may be just my bias for Dion.

Stephen Harper was not forward looking enough to loose the recent election. But, now that the Neo Cons from the States are done making sure the GOP did not win, they are expanding to the satellite states and exporting their master plan: Do not be the government when the economy is tanking.

Last week, the Conservatives were in a bind: They did not want to be government, but they had won the election. Mr. Harper was smart to put forward a budget update that the opposition MUST reject, and MUST form the government to oppose. Mr. Harper does NOT want another election because he could win.

For these reasons I predict Stephen Harper to NOT prorogate parliament, he will NOT ask for an election from the Governor General. I also predict no-one will be blamed for Flaherty’s buget update ‘miscalculation’. The opposition parties will become government. They will take the needed, but expensive, action to help the economy, and the Conservatives will not be blamed for the costs. The Conservatives will all play “nicely” and they will have a polished image, ready to get a majority, in 3-5 years when the financial disaster is over.

Just like Ontario after the Bob Rae coalition: Canada will get a Mike Harris revolution: A fire-sale of government assets, and spending like drunken sailors, so there is a huge deficit when the Conservative popularity is spent.