La SAQ et les producteurs de vin Québécois

Via le Blogue de David Descôteaux:

Les vignerons embouteillés

by David Descôteaux

(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

Le Congrès Américain fait preuve de bon sens..

...pour une fois!

Via le Blogue de Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:

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

Posted 05/17/2010 08:27 PM ET

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.

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

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

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

Published on Wednesday, May. 12, 2010 6:00AM EDTLast updated on Wednesday, May. 12, 2010 6:56AM EDT

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.