lundi 31 mai 2010

La citation du jour

There’s only one item that is bought through both fear and greed. That item is gold.

-Richard Russell

Un ancien directeur de la Bundesbank (Banque centrale Allemande) sur le plan d'aide à la Grèce

Peut-on imaginer Mark Carney ou Ben Bernanke faire preuve d'autant de jugement et d'honnêtet????


05/18/2010 03:54 PM

Former Central Bank Head Karl Otto Pöhl

Bailout Plan Is All About 'Rescuing Banks and Rich Greeks'

The 750 billion euro package the European Union passed last week to prop up the common currency has been heavily criticized in Germany. Former Bundesbank head Karl Otto Pöhl told SPIEGEL that Greece may ultimately have to opt out, and that the foundation of the euro has been fundamentally weakened.

SPIEGEL: Mr Pöhl, are you still investing in the euro -- or has the European common currency become too unstable of late?

Pöhl: I still have money in euros, but the question is justified. There is still danger that the euro will become a weak currency.

SPIEGEL: The exchange rate with the dollar is still close to $1.25. What's the problem?

Pöhl: The foundation of the euro has fundamentally changed as a result of the decision by euro-zone governments to transform themselves into a transfer union. That is a violation of every rule. In the treaties governing the functioning of the European Union, it explicitly states that no country is liable for the debts of any other. But what we are doing right now, is exactly that. Added to this is the fact that, against all its vows, and against an explicit ban within its own constitution, the European Central Bank (ECB) has become involved in financing states. Obviously, all of that will have an impact.

SPIEGEL: What do you think will happen?

Pöhl: The euro has already sunk in value against a whole list of other currencies. This trend could continue, because what we have basically done is guarantee a long line of weaker currencies that never should have been allowed to become part of the euro.

SPIEGEL: The German government has said that there was no alternative to the rescue package for Greece, nor to that for other debt-laden countries.

Pöhl: I don't believe that. Of course there were alternatives. For instance, never having allowed Greece to become part of the euro zone in the first place.

SPIEGEL: That may be true. But that was a mistake made years ago.

Pöhl: All the same, it was a mistake. That much is completely clear. I would also have expected the (European) Commission and the ECB to intervene far earlier. They must have realized that a small, indeed a tiny, country like Greece, one with no industrial base, would never be in a position to pay back €300 billion worth of debt.

SPIEGEL: According to the rescue plan, it's actually €350 billion ...

Pöhl: ... which that country has even less chance of paying back. Without a "haircut," a partial debt waiver, it cannot and will not ever happen. So why not immediately? That would have been one alternative. The European Union should have declared half a year ago -- or even earlier -- that Greek debt needed restructuring.

SPIEGEL: But according to Chancellor Angela Merkel, that would have led to a domino effect, with repercussions for other European states facing debt crises of their own.

Pöhl: I do not believe that. I think it was about something altogether different.

SPIEGEL: Such as?

Pöhl: It was about protecting German banks, but especially the French banks, from debt write offs. On the day that the rescue package was agreed on, shares of French banks rose by up to 24 percent. Looking at that, you can see what this was really about -- namely, rescuing the banks and the rich Greeks.

Un étudiant de 16 ans découvre des bactéries consommant du plastique

Comme quoi les découvertes les plus importantes, sont rarement l'affaire des 'experts'...


Boy discovers microbe that eats plastic

PhDs have been searching for a solution to the plastic waste problem, and this 16-year-old finds the answer.


Photo: Samuel Mann/Flickr
It's not your average science fair when the 16-year-old winner manages to solve a global waste crisis. But such was the case at last May's Canadian Science Fair in Waterloo, Ontario, where Daniel Burd, a high school student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, presented his research on microorganisms that can rapidly biodegrade plastic.
NOTE: There are TWO high school students who discovered plastic-consuming microorganisms. The first was Daniel Burd. The second was Tseng I-Ching (last month), a high school student in Taiwan.
Daniel had a thought it seems even the most esteemed PhDs hadn't considered. Plastic, one of the most indestructible of manufactured materials, does in fact eventually decompose. It takes 1,000 years but decompose it does, which means there must be microorganisms out there to do the decomposing.
Could those microorganisms be bred to do the job faster?
That was Daniel's question, and he put to the test with a very simple and clever process of immersing ground plastic in a yeast solution that encourages microbial growth, and then isolating the most productive organisms.
The preliminary results were encouraging, so he kept at it, selecting out the most effective strains and interbreeding them. After several weeks of tweaking and optimizing temperatures Burd was achieved a 43 percent degradation of plastic in six weeks, an almost inconceivable accomplishment.
With 500 billion plastic bags manufactured each year and a Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch that grows more expansive by the day, a low-cost and nontoxic method for degrading plastic is the stuff of environmentalists' dreams and, I would hazard a guess, a pretty good start-up company as well.
NOTE to the comment below: Yes there are certainly methods for decomposing plastic, but most are chemical in nature not organic, requiring high temperatures and chemical additives to cause the plasticizers to vaporize, for instance this patenton PVC extraction. There have been several successful bacteria-based solutions developed at the Department of Biotechnology in Tottori, Japan as well as the Department of Microbiology at the National University of Ireland, but both apply only to styrene compounds.
It goes without saying that these discoveries need to be tested to ensure, for instance, that the byproducts of organic decomposition are not carcinogenic (as in the case with mammalian metabolism of styrene and benzene). The processing of plastics by these methods would also have to be contained in highly controlled environments. So, no, we're not talking about a magic panacea or a plastic-free paradise, but the innovative application of microorganisms to break down our most troublesome waste products is nevertheless a major scientific breakthrough.
NOTE: One of our readers pointed out a very interesting study in 2004 at the University of Wisconsin that isolated a fungus capable of biodegrading phenol-formaldehyde polymers previously thought to be non-biodegradable. Phenol polymers are produced at an annual rate of 2.2 million metric tons per year in the United States for many industrial and commercial applications including durable plastics.
COMMENTS: This story has generated a flurry of feedback since it was posted on June 12. Here's a compilation of the best and brightest comments.


La citation du jour

"You have a choice between the natural stability of [G]old and the honesty and intelligence of the members of government. And with all due respect for those gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the capitalist system lasts, vote for [G]old."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

samedi 29 mai 2010

Le Paradoxe Français?

Via Whole Health Source:

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Does Red Wine Protect the Cardiovascular System?

The 'French paradox' rears its ugly head again. The reasoning goes something like this: French people eat more saturated animal fat than any other affluent nation, and have the second-lowest rate of coronary heart disease (only after Japan, which has a much higher stroke rate than France). French people drink red wine. Therefore, red wine must be protecting them against the artery-clogging yogurt, beef and butter.

The latest study to fall into this myth was published in the AJCN recently (
1). Investigators showed that 1/3 bottle of red wine per day for 21 days increased blood flow in forearm vessels of healthy volunteers, which they interpreted as "enhanced vascular endothelial function"*. The novel finding in this paper is that red wine consumption increases the migration of certain cells into blood vessels that are thought to maintain and repair the vessels. There were no control groups for comparison, neither abstainers nor a group drinking a different type of alcohol.

The investigators then went on to speculate that the various antioxidant polyphenols in red wine, such as the trendy molecule resveratrol, could be involved. Even though you have to give animals 500 bottles' worth of resveratrol per day to see any effect. But there's another little problem with this hypothesis...

Ethanol-- plain old alcohol. You could drink a 40 oz bottle of malt liquor every night and it would probably do the exact same thing.

No matter what the source, alcohol consumption is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease out to about 3-4 drinks per day, after which the risk goes back up (
2, 3)**. The association is not trivial-- up to a 62% lower risk associated with alcohol use. Controlled trials have shown that alcohol, regardless of the source, increases HDL cholesterol and reduces the tendency to clot (4).

Should we all start downing three drinks a day? Not so fast. Although alcohol does probably decrease heart attack risk, the effect on total mortality is equivocal. That's because it increases the risk of cancers and accidents. Alcohol is a drug, and my opinion is that like all drugs, overall it will not benefit the health of a person with an otherwise good diet and lifestyle. That being said, it's enjoyable, so I have no problem with drinking it in moderation. Just don't think you're doing it for your health.

So does red wine decrease the risk of having a heart attack? Yes, just as effectively as malt liquor. It's not the antioxidants and resveratrol, it's the ethanol. The reason the French avoid heart attacks is not because of some fancy compound in their wine that protects them from a high saturated fat intake. It's because they have preserved their diet traditions to a greater degree than most industrialized nations.

I do think it's interesting to speculate about why alcohol (probably) reduces heart attack risk. As far as I know, the mechanism is unknown. Could it be because it relaxes us? I'm going to ponder that over a glass of whiskey...


* It may well represent an improvement of endothelial function, but that's an assumption on the part of the investigators. It belongs in the discussion section, if anywhere, and not in the results section.

** The first study is really interesting. For once, I see no evidence of "healthy user bias". Rates of healthy behaviors were virtually identical across quintiles of alcohol intake. This gives me a much higher degree of confidence in the results.

Maxime Bernier et l'impôt aux entreprises

Via le National Post:

A people’s tax cut


By Special to the National Post May 26, 2010 – 8:48 pm

Canwest News Service files

The taxman's headquarters in Ottawa.

Abolish the corporate tax — only real people pay taxes

By Maxime Bernier

A famous American jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., wrote in 1927 that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. However much truth there may be in this statement, we’ve now gone way beyond this. Taxes today are the price we pay for having a big, fat and inefficient bureaucracy that tries to intervene in every aspect of our lives.

As long as we have taxes, however, we should make sure that they cause the least possible distortion in our economy.

Some taxes are really dumb. A tax on capital is self-defeating, in that it slows down capital accumulation, investment and economic growth. Fortunately, it has been abolished at the federal level. And our government provided an incentive in the 2007 budget to encourage provinces that still have a tax on capital to phase it out.

What about the corporate income tax? One proposal we hear regularly from proponents of bigger government is that corporations don’t pay enough taxes. If only they did, we could fund more government programs, and we could reduce the tax burden on individual taxpayers.

However appealing this argument may sound, it has no basis in logic.

Corporations may have a legal personality, but they are only abstract entities. They are, in effect, simply a bundle of contracts between managers, investors and workers, to produce some specific goods or services. Bundles of contracts don’t pay taxes, only real people pay taxes.

From the perspective of corporations, taxes are an additional cost of doing business. If you increase their taxes, to remain profitable they will have to find ways to lower other costs, or to increase revenues.

How does a corporation do this? One way is to reduce the returns to its owners and investors. In that sense, it becomes the equivalent of a capital tax, or a capital gains tax. It is not the corporation that pays the tax, but rather its owners and investors. And since capital is mobile, there is a limit to how much you can tax it. The result, as with the capital tax, is that we end up discouraging capital accumulation and investments in Canada.

Another way for corporations to shift the burden of their income tax is to increase the price of what they produce. In that sense, it becomes the equivalent of a tax on consumption. It is the consumers who pay it, not the corporation.

A corporation can also decide to cut down on its factors of production by laying off workers, reducing their wages, investing less in new equipment, or buying fewer inputs from its suppliers. Once again, in the end, it is real people who will pay the tax, either the company’s workers or the workers of other companies that do business with it.

In reality, corporations will shift the tax burden in a combination of these different ways to their workers, their consumers and their investors. And since we are all, in one way or another, workers, consumers and investors, we are the ones paying the tax.

Those who believe that we can shift part of our personal tax burden onto corporations are being totally misled by their misunderstanding of how the economy works. Taxing corporations is in fact taxing people. But that’s not all.

The whole process of taxing corporations, which then act as collection agents for the government, has consequences in itself. Corporations become less efficient, adding all kinds of distorted prices and signals to the smooth functioning of the economy.

Nobody benefits from this. Taxing corporations means unnecessarily burdening our wealth-creating machines.

On the other hand, when corporations are better able to produce goods and services, we all benefit: as consumers who get more for their money; as workers who get paid better; and as investors who get a better return.

One of the policies of my government that I am most proud of is the reduction in corporate taxes announced in 2006 by my colleague, the Minister of Finance, Jim Flaherty. The general tax rate was more than 22% in 2007. It has been going down every year since and will be at 15% in 2012. Canada will then have the lowest corporate income tax of the G7 countries.

It’s too bad that the opposition parties don’t understand economic logic enough to support these tax cuts. The leader of the Opposition, Michael Ignatieff, said again recently that if he were in power today, he would freeze the planned tax cuts and spend the money instead on social programs. That’s a very dishonest way to buy votes. You pretend to take money from corporations when in fact you take it from the pockets of all citizens; and then you pretend to be very generous by spending that money on some targeted special-interest groups.

If we were to apply economic logic consistently, we would of course go even further and get rid of corporate income tax in its entirety. It may be unrealistic for now, but the more the general public understands these sound economic principles, the more likely it is that one day, it will become politically acceptable.

It’s also important to understand economic logic so that we can reply to those who will accuse us of favouring corporations at the expense of the people. Corporate tax cuts are in fact a pro-people policy, because the world is not divided between people and businesses. Businesses are made of people. Businesses are people. The choice is rather between pro-growth and anti-growth policies.

Financial Post

Maxime Bernier is the Member of Parliament for Beauce.



Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/05/26/a-peoples-tax-cut/#ixzz0pKgXsJ1y

jeudi 27 mai 2010

La citation du jour (2)

As logic would dictate, an individual (and a society) gets wealthier by producing more than he consumes, and not by consuming more.
So, as usual, government and its establishment economists have it ass backwards.

-Doug Casey

La citation du jour

Mr. Obama is not only America’s president. He also presides over the biggest single user of oil in the world – the US military. The pentagon uses twice as much oil as the entire nation of Ireland. It sends soldiers in oil-burning airplanes to places of no apparent importance where they drive around in oil-burning machines for no apparent reason.


-Bill Bonner

Si Robin des Bois vivait au Québec...

Via le blogue de David Descoteaux:

JEUDI 27 MAI 2010

Si Robin des Bois vivait au Québec

(Publiée sur le site web du journal Métro)

Je suis allé voir Robin des Bois au cinéma. Je ne cours pas les films de superhéros. Vraiment pas. Mais celui-là est différent. Pertinent. En sortant de la salle je me suis dis : le Québec a besoin d’un Robin des Bois.

Rectifions d’abord la légende. On croit à tort que Robin des Bois prenait aux riches pour donner aux pauvres. Trop simpliste. Robin des Bois défendait la propriété privée. Il se battait pour la liberté pour tous de jouir, en vertu de la loi, du fruit de son travail. Il décochait ses flèches pour permettre aux citoyens – riches et pauvres – de protéger leur terre et leur argent de leur vol par le roi et ses percepteurs d’impôts. Son ennemi, c’étaitl'État. Celui dépensier et boulimique. Celui qui, lâchement, préfère fouiller plus profond dans les poches du peuple plutôt que de réduire ses trop nombreux fonctionnaires et ses dépenses, souvent somptuaires. Ça vous rappelle quelque chose?

Pas de doute, le Québec a besoin d’un Robin des Bois.Imaginons un peu ce qu’il ferait s’il vivait parmi nous...

Il irait, au galop, détrousser le « ministère des subventions » et rapporterait au peuple les milliards que l’État pige dans nos poches pour donner en cadeau aux grandes entreprises. Il ferait même un détour à cheval, région par région, pour nous redonner nos impôts que les administrateurs des programmes FIER distribuent scandaleusement à leurs copains.

Robin des Bois et sa bande iraient terroriser les commissaires scolaires en « réunion » sur leur terrain de golf. Ils dévaliseraient les centrales syndicales, plus préoccupées par le bien-être de leurs dirigeants que par celui de leurs membres.

Robin des Bois sèmerait la pagaille au ministère de l’Éducation. Pourchassé par des milliers de bureaucrates, il s’enfuirait à cheval avec un gros sac contenant le budget du ministère, et le rapporterait à ses légitimes propriétaires : les citoyens. Nos enfants s’en porteraient mieux.

Et pour vous, milady contribuables désirant qu’on dépense vos impôts de façon responsable, imaginez le beau Russell Crowe décocher une flèche au derrière du premier ministre, pour qu’il se décide enfin à déclencher une enquête sur l’industrie de la construction. Sexy, vous dites?

Nous avons plus que jamais besoin d’un Robin des Bois. Pas pour attaquer les riches. Pour protéger les pauvres et la classe moyenne contre le détournement de leurs impôts au profit des groupes d’intérêts – gros syndicats, grosses entreprises, etc. – et autres profiteurs du système.

Nous avons besoin d’un Robin des Bois pour freiner les excès des politiciens. Excès qui, sinon, auront tôt fait d’enchaîner nos enfants à une dette écrasante, tout en étouffant leurs parents avec d’incessants nouveaux impôts et taxes.

Nous avons besoin d’un Robin des Bois pour nous défendre contre notre propre gouvernement.

Que d’évolution depuis le Moyen-Âge…

mercredi 26 mai 2010

La citation du jour

"Is there a connection between Human Freedom and A Gold Redeemable Money? At first glance it would seem that money belongs to the world of economics and human freedom to the political sphere. But when you recall that one of the first moves by Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler was to outlaw individual ownership of gold, you begin to sense that there may be some connection between money, redeemable in gold, and the rare prize known as human liberty. Also, when you find that Lenin declared and demonstrated that a sure way to overturn the existing social order and bring about communism was by printing press paper money, then again you are impressed with the possibility of a relationship between a gold-backed money and human freedom."

-Howard Buffett, 1948

Le compte de dépense des parlementaires (à l'abri de la vérificatrice générale SVP!!)

Via Antagoniste.net:

Mercredi, 26 mai 2010 à 15 h 00 min

C’est notre argent Canada Coup de gueule Économie

Attention, politicien au travail !Selon un communiqué diffusé par le Bureau de régie interne de la Chambre des communes, le compte de dépenses des députés et sénateurs totalise 533 millions de dollars. Rappelons que les parlementaires refusent que la vérificatrice générale du Canada puisse examiner ces dépenses.

Faites le calcul, 533 millions de dollars pour 413 parlementaires (308 députés et 105 sénateurs) ça représente une dépense colossale de 1,29 million de dollars par parlementaire; le tout dilapidé à l’abri du regard du public (même si c’est notre argent) !!!

Chaque année, l’Agence du revenu du Canada examine les déclarations de revenus de plusieurs milliers de Canadiens. Mais contrairement aux députés, quand un fonctionnaire demande à un simple citoyen de produire des pièces justificatives, celui-ci n’a pas le luxe de répondre: « va te faire foutre ».

mardi 25 mai 2010

La citation du jour

Buying and selling is the nerve of human life that sustains the universe. By means of buying and selling the world is united, joining distant lands and nations, people of different languages, laws and ways of life. If it were not for these contracts, some would lack the goods that others have in abundance and they would not be able to share the goods that they have in excess with those countries where they are scarce.

-Bartolomé de Albornoz, 16th-century Spanish theologian

lundi 24 mai 2010

La citation du jour

What the world needs is more unemployed politicians.

-Craig R.

vendredi 21 mai 2010

La citation du jour

Of course, all governments are dangerous, destructive, and annoying. But the ones that are incompetent and disrespected are easiest to deal with…

-Louis James

jeudi 20 mai 2010

Comment gagner un prix Nobel de la Paix?

En envoyant des troupes pour encercler l'Iran, évidemment...


US Begins Massive Military Build Up Around Iran, Sending Up To 4 New Carrier Groups In Region

Tyler Durden's picture




As if uncontrollable economic contagion was not enough for the administration, Obama is now willing to add geopolitical risk to the current extremely precarious economic and financial situation. Over at Debkafile we read that the president has decided to "boost US military strength in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf regions in the short term with an extra air and naval strike forces and 6,000 Marine and sea combatants." With just one aircraft carrier in proximity to Iran, the Nobel peace prize winner has decided to send a clear message that peace will no longer be tolerated, and has decided to increase the US aircraft carrier presence in the region by a 400-500% CAGR.

From Debka:

Carrier Strike Group 10, headed by the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, sails out of the US Navy base at Norfolk, Virginia Friday, May 21. On arrival, it will raise the number of US carriers off Iranian shores to two. Up until now, President Barack Obama kept just one aircraft carrier stationed off the coast of Iran, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Arabian Sea, in pursuit of his policy of diplomatic engagement with Tehran.

For the first time, too, the US force opposite Iran will be joined by a German warship, the frigate FGS Hessen, operating under American command.

It is also the first time that Obama, since taking office 14 months ago, is sending military reinforcements to the Persian Gulf. Our military sources have learned that the USS Truman is just the first element of the new buildup of US resources around Iran. It will take place over the next three months, reaching peak level in late July and early August. By then, the Pentagon plans to have at least 4 or 5 US aircraft carriers visible from Iranian shores.

The USS Truman's accompanying Strike Group includes Carrier Air Wing Three (Battle Axe) - which has 7 squadrons - 4 of F/A-18 Super Hornet and F/A-18 Hornet bomber jets, as well as spy planes and early warning E-2 Hawkeyes that can operate in all weather conditions; the Electronic Attack Squadron 130 for disrupting enemy radar systems; and Squadron 7 of helicopters for anti-submarine combat (In its big naval exercise last week, Iran exhibited the Velayat 89 long-range missile for striking US aircraft carriers and Israel warships from Iranian submarines.)

Another four US warships will be making their way to the region to join the USS Truman and its Strike Group. They are the guided-missile cruiser USS Normandy and guided missile destroyers USS Winston S. Churchill, USS Oscar Austin and USS Ross.

We can't wait for Iran to feel completely unthreatened by this escalation and to decide to take no action whatsoever as the Nobelists push it even more into a corner from which the only escape, to a rational player, would be outright aggression... Which begs the question just how an irrational player would react.

h/t Mark



Bernard Landry à la radio

...et il essaie d'en passer une vite.

Merci aux bloggeurs de Antagoniste.net:

Arguing with Idiots: Bernard Landry

20 mai 2010

Sur les ondes du 98.5, Barnard Landry a déclaré (et ce n’est pas une blague), que si les États-Unis avaient adopté la même réforme du Code du travail que le PQ a mis en place en 1977, les États-Unis auraient, tout comme le Québec, eu un taux de chômage inférieur lors de la présente récession.

D’entrée de jeu, il est plutôt ridicule d’affirmer que si le taux de chômage du Québec est resté relativement inchangé lors de la présente récession, c’est à cause de la réforme du Code du travail adopté en 1977. Mais donnons le bénéfice du doute à Bernard Landry (il en a bien besoin) et admettons qu’il a raison.

Donc, analysons l’évolution du taux de chômage aux États-Unis et au Québec depuis 1977, pour voir qu’elles ont été les formidables avantages de la réforme péquiste:

Bernard Landry

Quelle incroyable réalisation que cette réforme du Code du travail ! En échange de taux de chômage avantageux pendant quelques mois tous les 30 ans, les gens ont droit à un taux de chômage chroniquement élevé le reste du temps ! Quelle bonne affaire !

Imaginez que vous placez votre argent dans une compagnie. Durant 29 ans, votre placement obtient un rendement négatif (vous perdez de l’argent) et finalement, à la 30e année, vous êtes en mesure d’avoir un petit rendement positif. Toute personne normalement constituée considérerait que ce placement a été désastreux, mais Bernard Landry n’est pas une personne normalement constituée. Parce que pour Bernard Landry, le petit gain de la 30e année suffit à faire oublier les 29 années de pertes.

Et dire qu’on a été gouverné par ce bouffon…

Sources:
Statistique Canada/ U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Tableaux 279-0035 / Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey

mercredi 19 mai 2010

La citation du jour (2)

Well, to start with, it's not America anymore, it's the United States, a welfare-warfare state that offers perverse incentives to be non-productive and goes around the world creating enemies with an extremely aggressive foreign policy.


-Doug Casey

La SAQ et les producteurs de vin Québécois

Via le Blogue de David Descôteaux:

Les vignerons embouteillés

(Publiée dans le journal Métro)

«C’est parti! Vous pouvez venir goûter nos rosés du printemps!» Charles-Henri de Coussergues est copropriétaire du vignoble l’Orpailleur, dans la vallée de Dunham. Un des 17 vignobles à visiter cet été, à vélo ou en auto, en parcourant la route des vins du Québec. Une traversée bucolique de 120 km dans la région de Brome-Missisquoi, au sud de Montréal. Vous pouvez y boire des rouges et des blancs d’ici. Mais surtout, vous pouvez aider les vignerons québécois, prisonniers des griffes de la SAQ et de la Régie des alcools du Québec…

«La saison de la route des vins, c’est crucial pour nous. Les bouteilles qu’on vend aux touristes sur notre vignoble représentent 75 % de nos ventes annuelles», dit M. de Coussergues. Pourquoi ne pas vendre ses bouteilles sur les tablettes de la SAQ? Parce que la SAQ insiste pour se prendre une marge de 135 % sur les vins québécois. «Si je vends mon Orpailleur classique (blanc) 5,60 $ à la SAQ, elle va vous le revendre 13,75 $.» Et à ce prix, le vigneron fait zéro profit. S’il veut faire quelques sous, il doit vendre son vin plus cher à la SAQ. Sauf que la majoration, elle, demeure la même. Résultat : le prix final va grimper. «Et à 16 $ ou 17 $, les gens hésitent à acheter un vin québécois.»

Ce n’est pas la SAQ qu’il faut blâmer, dit M. de Coussergues. Mais plutôt la Régie des alcools. C’est elle qui protège le monopole de la SAQ, en interdisant à tout entrepreneur de lancer sa propre boutique de vin. La Régie tolère que les vignerons vendent leurs bouteilles aux touristes qui visitent leurs terres, ou à des restaurants. Mais sans plus. Personne ne doit concurrencer la vache à lait du gouvernement!

Voilà une autre raison de libéraliser le marché de l’alcool au Québec. Si on permettait un peu de concurrence, les producteurs québécois y gagneraient, dit Frédéric Laurin, auteur du livre Où sont les vins? «Regardez la quantité de produits québécois disponibles au Marché des Saveurs du Québec», dit-il. (Une boutique du Marché Jean-Talon – la seule au Québec – qui a gagné le droit de vendre des vins après un long combat contre la Régie.) «En libérant le marché, toute boutique de produits fins, comme les petites épiceries ou les fromageries, pourrait offrir des vins québécois pour accompagner leurs mets», explique M. Laurin. Et comme la mode est aux produits locaux, les producteurs québécois pourraient écouler leurs produits hors de leurs terres, pendant toute l’année.

Le monopole de la SAQ – en plus de nous faire payer trop cher nos bouteilles – freine le développement du terroir québécois. Si ce monopole nuisible vous fait suer autant que moi, allez pédaler un bon coup sur la route des vins cet été. Ça détend.

La citation du Jour

C’est ça la reprise économique de 2010 : Prix de l’immobilier en baisse, reprises en hausse, faillites en hausse, revenus des individus en baisse (excluant aide gouvernementale), ventes au détail en baisse (excluant aide gouvernementale) et, bien sûr, l’aide gouvernementale (notre dette future) en très forte hausse.

-Paul Dontigny

mardi 18 mai 2010

Le Congrès Américain fait preuve de bon sens..

...pour une fois!


Congress blocks indiscriminate IMF aid for Europe


Europe may have to clean up its own mess after all. The US Senate has voted 94:0 to block use of taxpayers’ money for IMF rescues that make no economic sense or bail-outs for countries like Greece that far are beyond the point of no return.

“This amendment will help prevent American taxpayer dollars from underwriting dysfunctional governments abroad,” said Texas Senator John Cornyn, the chief sponsor. “American taxpayers have seen more bailouts than they can stomach, and the last thing they should have to worry about are their hard-earned tax dollars being used to rescue a foreign government. Greece is not by any stretch of the imagination too big to fail.”

Co-sponsor David Vitter from Louisiana said America had run out of money. “Our country already owes trillions of dollars in debt. We simply can’t afford to take on other countries’ debt in addition to our own.”

It is unclear where this leaves the EU’s $1 trillion “shock and uh” package. Urlich Leuchtmann from Commerzbank said the IMF share of $320bn was the only genuine money on the table, the rest being largely euro smoke and mirrors, or plain bluff.

The measure is an amendment to the US financial overhaul law. Backed by both parties, it can hardly be ignored by the Obama administration whatever Tim Geithner may or may not want to do. The bill has to go to Conference for reconciliation with the House, but the point is made.

It instructs the US representative at the IMF to determine whether a country with a public debt above 100 per cent of GDP can be expected to repay IMF loans. If this cannot be certified, the US must oppose the rescue package.

This is obviously aimed at Greece, which will have a debt of 130 per cent by the end of this year. The debt will rise to 150 per cent by the end of its the rescue/death package, leaving Greece in a worse position than before.

The IMF share of the Greek bail-out is 30 times quota, more than double any other rescue in the history of the Fund. There is a very strong suspicion in Washington that the IMF is being misused by French chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn – French presidential candidate in waiting – to support ideological purposes regardless of economic logic or sanity. This can (and in my view most likely will) destroy the credibility of the Fund itself unless the US and Asians can wrench the institution back from the Europeans.

The US is the IMF’s biggest shareholder and can veto aid packages, though it has never done so because the Fund has never been so stupid as to defy the world’s dominant financial and strategic power.

In this case it fair to assume that China shares many of the Senate’s concerns. The latest US Treasury Tics data shows that China is rotating is vast reserves back into dollars, and presumably away from euro bonds. If we treat this as Chimerica – the US/Chinese single currency or condominium – we have a force in the world that cannot be pushed around.

Personally, I have changed my mind on Greece. My initial reaction earlier this year was that it had to be saved to avoid a sovereign Lehman. Many posters on this blog cried “shame”, saying it was just another moral hazard rescue for bankers. They were right. I flagellate myself and wear a dunce’s hat.

The correct policy would have been – and still is – to help Greece out of its debt-deflation death spiral through an orderly “pre-emptive debt restructuring” along the lines of the IMF package for Uruguay. In Greece’s case it would require a haircut of 50 per cent or so for foolhardy creditors, ie your bank and mine, your pension fund and mine. This would not do much good unless Greece also devalued by 30 per cent to 40 per cent to retrieve competitiveness and put the whole fixed-exchange nightmare behind it.

This would be the normal IMF policy in these circumstances as countless ex-IMF officials have stated. I suspect that many in the Bundesbank and the Bundestag finance committee would have liked this policy too – making an example of a country that was so far gone, and had so flagrantly broken the rules.

The IMF-EU should instead have drawn up its defences in Iberia, along the Lines of Torres Vedras – to borrow from Wellington. Portugal and Spain are at least defensible – arguably – and more deserving.

The solution is being blocked because Brussels views any step back in the EMU Project as intolerable. So the IMF is squandering its scarce resources on an unworkable plan in Greece.

As we can now see, by misusing the IMF so cavalierly the euro-elites have provoked a reaction from Washington that will vastly complicate any future rescue for any eurozone state.

In fact, we are already living in a post-IMF world. There is no bailer-of-last-resort. Sobering, isn’t it?


La boulimie expropriatrice de Chavez

Merci à Pierre Lemieux d'avoir attiré mon attention sur cet article.

Via Investors.com:

Hugo Chavez's Expropriation Binge

It was everybody into the pool after Hugo Chavez took over the ranch of a former U.N. Security Council president who's been critical of the dictator.

It was everybody into the pool after Hugo Chavez took over the ranch of a former U.N. Security Council president who's been critical of the dictator. View Enlarged Image

Socialism: After 12 years in power and $960 billion in oil earnings, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is down to stealing private swimming pools to bring the good life to Venezuela's "poor." It's a new milestone on his road to ruin.

Acting like Robert Mugabe on cocaine, Venezuela's dictator went on a shopping spree over the weekend, confiscating one farm and industry after another.

First, a flour factory run by Mexican multinational Gruma was plundered, followed by the nationalization of a bauxite unit of U.S.-based NorPro. After that, a steel subsidiary of Luxembourg-based Tenaris called Matesi was taken, along with a group of transport companies.

Unsated, Chavez then announced — via Twitter — the takeover of the private University of Santa Ines in Barinas state. And for good measure, he launched new exchange controls, another form of expropriation.

One taking stood out, however — a 370-acre ranch in Yaracuy state that grows oranges and coffee and raises cattle with 38 shareholding farm workers. The scenic property on an otherwise desolate stretch of highway is owned by Diego Arria, Venezuela's former president of the U.N. Security Council. It's been in his family since 1852.

Arria had spoken out against Chavez, so Chavez got personal. "If he wants to farm now, he will have to topple Chavez, because this now belongs to the revolution," El Presidente pronounced.

Arria told IBD he's been pressured for two years with acts of vandalism and the kidnapping of farmhands. A month ago, Chavista Ministry of Culture operatives approached him in Norway, demanding that he quit criticizing the Chavez regime. If he didn't "play ball," he'd lose the ranch, Arria was warned. "But I never negotiate with thugs," he said.

Chavez's red-shirts finally acted over the weekend, opening the farm to "the masses" in a show of class warfare. Chavista leaders from the National Institute of Lands headed first to Arria's living quarters, rolling over his bed, pawing through his wife's clothing and desecrating a chapel dedicated to the Arrias' late daughter.

For their big photo spectacular, they hauled in 300 or 400 children to swim in Arria's swimming pool, ride the ranch horses and tour the main house — encouraging the kids to take "souvenirs." Chavez said it was all proof he was "socializing happiness."

In reality, the attack on Arria's farm was proof of Chavez's own failures. Unable to create any prosperity, even after 12 years in power and a trillion dollars in oil cash, Chavez still resorts to crude medieval plunder to bring any spoils to his supporters.

It would be logical to think Venezuela's oil earnings would be sufficient to build swimming pools for the children of Yaracuy. But Chavez's destruction of property rights and rule of law from these confiscations — now numbering 500 or so, have ended any prospect of prosperity coming to the country's poor.

Not a single expropriated property in Venezuela produces what it produced when it was privately owned. In a year Arria's ranch will be a wasteland, and Venezuela will find itself importing even more than the 76% of its food it now imports.

With disrespect for property rights goes disregard for human rights, as the confiscation of the Arria ranch attests.

lundi 17 mai 2010

La citation du jour

The average man in Europe thinks his government is somehow watching out for him. I suppose that's true, at least the way a dairyman watches his cows, or a swineherd watches his pigs.
-Doug Casey

samedi 15 mai 2010

La citation du jour

According to Webster's New World Dictionary, terrorism is "the use of force or threats to intimidate, especially as a political policy." This implies that all governments engage in terrorism daily against their own citizens – which is actually true, as anyone who's been audited by the IRS can tell you.

-Doug Casey

vendredi 14 mai 2010

La Bank for International Settlements sonne l'alarme

La vénérable et très discrète Bank for International Settlements, la plus vieille et probablement la plus puissante institution financière de la planète, a diffusé un mémo énonçant de façon très claire que les économies 'développées' couraient droit à la faillite financière sans coupures 'dramatiques' dans leurs dépenses.

Via the Globe and Mail:

Neil Reynolds

The Swiss-based Bank of International Settlements (BIS), the oldest international financial institution in the world, has functioned as the central bank of central bankers for 80 years. In a working paper written by three senior staff economists (“The future of public debt: prospects and implications”), released in March, BIS warns that Greece isn’t the only Western economy with hazard lights flashing.

Indeed, it names 11 more: Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Britain – and the United States. Without “drastic measures,” BIS says, all of these countries will hit a wall of debt.

When the senior economists at BIS warn 12 of the richest countries on Earth that they must take drastic action to reduce debt, you know that it’s time to check the air bags. The only thing you don’t know, that you need to know, is the precise time of the crash. The lesson is already obvious: Governments can’t drive recklessly, use only the accelerator for braking and not eventually crash.

The BIS paper notes that the public debt of 30 OECD countries will (on average) exceed 100 per cent of GDP within the next year, “something that has never happened before in peacetime.” But it warns that conventional debt-to-GDP ratios are misleading – missing “enormous future costs” that are already authorized by past fiscal commitments, that will inexorably inflate public debt further still.

By the end of 2011, the BIS economists calculate, U.S. government debt will have risen from 62 per cent of GDP in 2007, not quite three years ago, to 100 per cent. Britain’s debt will have risen from 47 per cent of GDP to 94 per cent. Italy’s debt will have risen from 112 per cent of GDP to 130 per cent. All together, the public debt of the 12 countries will have risen from 73 per cent of combined GDP to 105 per cent.

At this debt level, the risk of sovereign default rises rapidly. But the BIS analysis says this unprecedented debt level will itself increase “precipitously” in coming years. It will not, as each of these countries separately insists, fall.

For one thing, the BIS report says, countries that proclaim spending restraint generally do not actually do it. Normally, they hold the line – temporarily. Normally, they slow the rate of increase – temporarily. All pronouncements aside, the BIS report says, these 12 countries have made such grandiose spending commitments that they are predestined for higher debt. The U.S. debt-GDP ratio will hit 150 per cent in the next decade. Britain’s debt-GDP ratio will hit 200 per cent. Japan’s debt-GDP ratio will hit 300 per cent.

These increases in debt, the BIS report says, are untenable. The financial markets, of course, won’t permit them. The only mystery, the BIS report says, is exactly when the markets will intervene. History shows, the report says, that when the markets do rebel, they often do so instantaneously and decisively – often without much warning.

“When, in the absence of fiscal actions, will investors start demanding a much higher compensation for the risk of holding the increasingly large amounts of public debt that [these countries] are going to issue to finance their extravagant ways?” the BIS economists ask. “The question is when will markets start putting pressure on governments, not if,” they respond.

When the markets do require a much higher risk premium, the consequences will be felt around the world – on rich and poor countries alike, on the thrifty as well as on the profligate. These consequences will certainly fall on Canada as well. If it takes Europe to save Greece, what will it take to save Europe? Emerging economies have done a better job than the rich countries in controlling debt. Asian government debt stands at 40 per cent of GDP; Central European government debt stands at 28 per cent; Latin American government debt stands at 37 per cent.

In its most spooky, mind-boggling analysis, the BIS economists try to determine the share of GDP that interest rates would require – assuming, across the next 30 years, that the 12 governments kept spending as they are spending now. In the case of the United States, interest payments would cost 22 per cent of GDP in 2040. In the case of Britain, interest payments would cost 27 per cent. For Britain, this would shove the government’s share of GDP close to 80 per cent.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty are right to press the more profligate countries for an exit strategy from stimulus spending. But what the rich economies actually need is an exit strategy from too much spending of all kinds and a return to some pragmatic recognition of the limits of government.

The writers of the BIS report are Stephen Cecchetti, head of the BIS monetary and economic department; M.S. Mohanty, director of the BIS macroeconomic analysis department; and Fabrizio Zampolli, BIS’s senior economist. Their report deserves both attention and action.