Annette, in fact, your humble servant is reading a 2007 book by Richard Florida entitled The Flight of the Creative Class. In it, he argues, observes that talent today has many geographic options. America, the USA, is no longer the only destination of talent. Options like Toronto, Canada and Auckland, New Zealand exist, and we in effect are competing now internationally for talent, not just locally. The best talent will not automatically consider the USA its first choice.
This will become a huge issue if and when people are allowd to carry pistols in holsters openly in public in the USA. This is, believe it or not, a key rising political issue in our Madison, Wisconsin area. People are going to public places, e.g. restaurants, with loaded weapons in holsters, and they are claiming a constitutional right to do this in America. If this becomes legal, accepted practice, look for the flight of the creative class from America to become a race for the exits from the USA to other geographic locations that do not allow cowboy antics in the Information Age.
The local politicians here claim to want to bring, create jobs; after saying this, they start pushing public display of loaded weapons! Your humble servant literally heard a candidate for Wisconsin State Senate say this at a dinner last night. Canada, where this writer has options, looks better and better. Your professor is an example of the new creative class who has geographic options and is not place-bound as in the factory, farm age.
This writer has placed an election sign for the opponent of this "gun nut" in his front yard now.
The other danger is the public arming of persons of a certain political persuasion could result in overt violence against persons who disagree with them. Imagine having a political rally and your opponents show up with loaded weapons. It would have a chilling effect on politics and could quickly degenerate into "politics by the gun," not the ballot. This is a very real potential and lethal danger to democratic processes. It is not just the danger of increased, random public violence because of "bad hair days" or drunken feuds in and outside taverns.
The Flight of the Creative Class by Richard Florida sadly sounds a warning about the future loss of critical human resources from the USA if this trend toward Wild West gun-slinging takes root.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
Canada and world economy decouple from US economy
Wall Street Sees World Economy Decoupling From U.S.
By Simon Kennedy - Oct 4, 2010 Wall Street economists are reviving a bet that the global economy will withstand the U.S. slowdown.
Just three years since America began dragging the world into its deepest recession in seven decades, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Credit Suisse Holdings USA Inc. and BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research are forecasting that this time will be different. Goldman Sachs predicts worldwide growth will slow 0.2 percentage point to 4.6 percent in 2011, even as expansion in the U.S. falls to 1.8 percent from 2.6 percent.
Underpinning their analysis is the view that international reliance on U.S. trade has diminished and is too small to spread the lingering effects of America’s housing bust. Providing the U.S. pain doesn’t roil financial markets as it did in the credit crisis, Goldman Sachs expects a weakening dollar, higher bond yields outside the U.S. and stronger emerging-market equities.
“So long as it doesn’t turn to flu, the world can withstand a cold from the U.S.,” Ethan Harris, head of developed-markets economic research in New York at BofA Merrill Lynch, said in a telephone interview. He predicts the U.S. will expand 1.8 percent next year, compared with 3.9 percent globally.
That may provide comfort for some of the central bankers and finance ministers from 187 nations flocking to Washington for annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on Oct. 8-10. IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard last month predicted “positive but low growth in advanced countries,” while developing nations expand at a “very high” rate. He will release revised forecasts on Oct. 6.
‘Partially Decoupled’
“The world has already become partially decoupled,” Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a professor at New York’s Columbia University, said in a Sept. 20 interview in Zurich. He will speak at an IMF event this week.
Sixteen months after the world’s largest economy emerged from recession, the U.S. recovery is losing momentum, with factory orders falling 0.5 percent in August and unemployment forecast to increase to 9.7 percent in September from the previous month’s 9.6 percent, according to the median estimate of 78 economists in a Bloomberg News survey.
Their predictions don’t include another contraction, with growth estimated at 2.7 percent this year and some indicators showing progress. Orders for capital goods rose 5.1 percent in August and the number of contracts to purchase previously owned homes increased 4.3 percent; both were higher than forecasts.
China Manufacturing Accelerates
Even so, emerging markets are showing more strength. Manufacturing in China accelerated for a second consecutive month in September, and industrial production in India jumped 13.8 percent in July from a year earlier, more than twice the June pace.
“It seems that recent economic data help to confirm the story of emerging-markets outperformance,” said David Lubin, chief economist for emerging markets at Citigroup Inc. in London.
The gap in growth rates between the developing and advanced worlds is widening, he said. Emerging economies will account for about 60 percent of global expansion this year and next, up from about 25 percent a decade ago, according to his estimates.
The main reason for the divergence: “Direct transmission from a U.S. slowdown to other economies through exports is just not large enough to spread a U.S. demand problem globally,” Goldman Sachs economists Dominic Wilson and Stacy Carlson wrote in a Sept. 22 report entitled “If the U.S. sneezes...”
Limited Exposure
Take the so-called BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China. While exports account for almost 20 percent of their gross domestic product, sales to the U.S. compose less than 5 percent of GDP, according to their estimates. That means even if U.S. growth slowed 2 percent, the drag on these four countries would be about 0.1 percentage point, the economists reckon. Developed economies including the U.K., Germany and Japan also have limited exposure, they said.
Economies outside the U.S. have room to grow that the U.S. doesn’t, partly because of its outsized slump in house prices, Wilson and Carlson said. The drop of almost 35 percent is more than twice as large as the worst declines in the rest of the Group of 10 industrial nations, they found.
The risk to the decoupling wager is a repeat of 2008, when the U.S. property bubble burst and then morphed into a global credit and banking shock that ricocheted around the world. For now, Goldman Sachs’s index of U.S. financial conditions signals that bond and stock markets aren’t stressed by the U.S. outlook.
Weaker Dollar
The break with the U.S. will be reflected in a weaker dollar, with the Chinese yuan appreciating to 6.49 per dollar in a year from 6.685 on Oct. 1, according to Goldman Sachs forecasts.
The bank is also betting that yields on U.S. 10-year debt will be lower by June than equivalent yields for Germany, the U.K., Canada, Australia and Norway. U.S. notes will rise to 2.8 percent from 2.52 percent, Germany’s will increase to 3 percent from 2.3 percent and Canada’s will grow to 3.8 percent from 2.76 percent on Oct. 1, Goldman Sachs projects.
Goldman Sachs isn’t alone in making the case for decoupling. Harris at BofA Merrill Lynch said he didn’t buy the argument prior to the financial crisis. Now he believes global growth is strong enough to offer a “handkerchief” to the U.S. as it suffers a “growth recession” of weak expansion and rising unemployment, he said.
Giving him confidence is his calculation that the U.S. share of global GDP has shrunk to about 24 percent from 31 percent in 2000. He also notes that, unlike the U.S., many countries avoided asset bubbles, kept their banking systems sound and improved their trade and budget positions.
Economic Locomotives
A book published last week by the World Bank backs him up. “The Day After Tomorrow” concludes that developing nations aren’t only decoupling, they also are undergoing a “switchover” that will make them such locomotives for the world economy, they can help rescue advanced nations. Among the reasons for the revolution are greater trade between emerging markets, the rise of the middle class and higher commodity prices, the book said.
Investors are signaling they agree. The U.S. has fallen behind Brazil, China and India as the preferred place to invest, according to a quarterly survey conducted last month of 1,408 investors, analysts and traders who subscribe to Bloomberg. Emerging markets also attracted more money from share offerings than industrialized nations last quarter for the first time in at least a decade, Bloomberg data show.
Room to Ease
Indonesia, India, China and Poland are the developing economies least vulnerable to a U.S. slowdown, according to a Sept. 14 study based on trade ties by HSBC Holdings Plc economists. China, Russia and Brazil also are among nations with more room than industrial countries to ease policies if a U.S. slowdown does weigh on their growth, according to a policy- flexibility index designed by the economists, who include New York-based Pablo Goldberg.
“Emerging economies kept their powder relatively dry, and are, for the most part, in a position where they could act countercyclically if needed,” the HSBC group said.
Links to developing countries are helping insulate some companies against U.S. weakness. Swiss watch manufacturer Swatch Group AG and tire maker Nokian Renkaat of Finland are among the European businesses that should benefit from trade with nations such as Russia and China where consumer demand is growing, according to BlackRock Inc. portfolio manager Alister Hibbert.
“There’s a lot of life in the global economy,” Hibbert, said at a Sept. 8 presentation to reporters in London.
Asset Bubbles
The increasing focus on emerging markets may present challenges for their policy makers as the flow of money into their economies risks fanning inflation, asset bubbles and currency appreciation. Countries from South Korea to Thailand have already intervened to weaken their currencies, along with taking steps to restrict capital inflows.
Stephen Roach, nonexecutive Asia chairman for Morgan Stanley, remains skeptical of decoupling. He links the optimism to a snapback in global trade from a record 11 percent slide in 2009. As that fades amid sluggish demand from advanced economies, emerging markets that rely on exports for strength will “face renewed and formidable headwinds,” he said.
“Decoupling is still a dream in much of the developing world,” said Roach, who also teaches at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
‘Year of Recoupling’
The Goldman Sachs economists argue history is on their side. The U.K., Australia and Canada all continued growing amid the U.S. recession of 2001 as the technology-stock bust passed them by, while America’s 2006-2007 housing slowdown inflicted little pain outside its borders, they said. The shift came when the latter morphed into a financial crisis, prompting Goldman Sachs to declare in December 2007 that 2008 would be the “year of recoupling.”
The argument finds favor with Neal Soss, New York-based chief economist at Credit Suisse. While the supply of dollars and letters of credit that fuel international commerce dried up during the turmoil, that isn’t a problem now, so the rest of the world can cope with a weaker U.S., he said.
“Decoupling was a good idea then and is a good idea now,” Soss said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Simon Kennedy at skennedy4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story John Fraher at jfraher@bloomberg.net
.®2010 BLOOMBERG L.P. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
By Simon Kennedy - Oct 4, 2010 Wall Street economists are reviving a bet that the global economy will withstand the U.S. slowdown.
Just three years since America began dragging the world into its deepest recession in seven decades, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Credit Suisse Holdings USA Inc. and BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research are forecasting that this time will be different. Goldman Sachs predicts worldwide growth will slow 0.2 percentage point to 4.6 percent in 2011, even as expansion in the U.S. falls to 1.8 percent from 2.6 percent.
Underpinning their analysis is the view that international reliance on U.S. trade has diminished and is too small to spread the lingering effects of America’s housing bust. Providing the U.S. pain doesn’t roil financial markets as it did in the credit crisis, Goldman Sachs expects a weakening dollar, higher bond yields outside the U.S. and stronger emerging-market equities.
“So long as it doesn’t turn to flu, the world can withstand a cold from the U.S.,” Ethan Harris, head of developed-markets economic research in New York at BofA Merrill Lynch, said in a telephone interview. He predicts the U.S. will expand 1.8 percent next year, compared with 3.9 percent globally.
That may provide comfort for some of the central bankers and finance ministers from 187 nations flocking to Washington for annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on Oct. 8-10. IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard last month predicted “positive but low growth in advanced countries,” while developing nations expand at a “very high” rate. He will release revised forecasts on Oct. 6.
‘Partially Decoupled’
“The world has already become partially decoupled,” Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a professor at New York’s Columbia University, said in a Sept. 20 interview in Zurich. He will speak at an IMF event this week.
Sixteen months after the world’s largest economy emerged from recession, the U.S. recovery is losing momentum, with factory orders falling 0.5 percent in August and unemployment forecast to increase to 9.7 percent in September from the previous month’s 9.6 percent, according to the median estimate of 78 economists in a Bloomberg News survey.
Their predictions don’t include another contraction, with growth estimated at 2.7 percent this year and some indicators showing progress. Orders for capital goods rose 5.1 percent in August and the number of contracts to purchase previously owned homes increased 4.3 percent; both were higher than forecasts.
China Manufacturing Accelerates
Even so, emerging markets are showing more strength. Manufacturing in China accelerated for a second consecutive month in September, and industrial production in India jumped 13.8 percent in July from a year earlier, more than twice the June pace.
“It seems that recent economic data help to confirm the story of emerging-markets outperformance,” said David Lubin, chief economist for emerging markets at Citigroup Inc. in London.
The gap in growth rates between the developing and advanced worlds is widening, he said. Emerging economies will account for about 60 percent of global expansion this year and next, up from about 25 percent a decade ago, according to his estimates.
The main reason for the divergence: “Direct transmission from a U.S. slowdown to other economies through exports is just not large enough to spread a U.S. demand problem globally,” Goldman Sachs economists Dominic Wilson and Stacy Carlson wrote in a Sept. 22 report entitled “If the U.S. sneezes...”
Limited Exposure
Take the so-called BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China. While exports account for almost 20 percent of their gross domestic product, sales to the U.S. compose less than 5 percent of GDP, according to their estimates. That means even if U.S. growth slowed 2 percent, the drag on these four countries would be about 0.1 percentage point, the economists reckon. Developed economies including the U.K., Germany and Japan also have limited exposure, they said.
Economies outside the U.S. have room to grow that the U.S. doesn’t, partly because of its outsized slump in house prices, Wilson and Carlson said. The drop of almost 35 percent is more than twice as large as the worst declines in the rest of the Group of 10 industrial nations, they found.
The risk to the decoupling wager is a repeat of 2008, when the U.S. property bubble burst and then morphed into a global credit and banking shock that ricocheted around the world. For now, Goldman Sachs’s index of U.S. financial conditions signals that bond and stock markets aren’t stressed by the U.S. outlook.
Weaker Dollar
The break with the U.S. will be reflected in a weaker dollar, with the Chinese yuan appreciating to 6.49 per dollar in a year from 6.685 on Oct. 1, according to Goldman Sachs forecasts.
The bank is also betting that yields on U.S. 10-year debt will be lower by June than equivalent yields for Germany, the U.K., Canada, Australia and Norway. U.S. notes will rise to 2.8 percent from 2.52 percent, Germany’s will increase to 3 percent from 2.3 percent and Canada’s will grow to 3.8 percent from 2.76 percent on Oct. 1, Goldman Sachs projects.
Goldman Sachs isn’t alone in making the case for decoupling. Harris at BofA Merrill Lynch said he didn’t buy the argument prior to the financial crisis. Now he believes global growth is strong enough to offer a “handkerchief” to the U.S. as it suffers a “growth recession” of weak expansion and rising unemployment, he said.
Giving him confidence is his calculation that the U.S. share of global GDP has shrunk to about 24 percent from 31 percent in 2000. He also notes that, unlike the U.S., many countries avoided asset bubbles, kept their banking systems sound and improved their trade and budget positions.
Economic Locomotives
A book published last week by the World Bank backs him up. “The Day After Tomorrow” concludes that developing nations aren’t only decoupling, they also are undergoing a “switchover” that will make them such locomotives for the world economy, they can help rescue advanced nations. Among the reasons for the revolution are greater trade between emerging markets, the rise of the middle class and higher commodity prices, the book said.
Investors are signaling they agree. The U.S. has fallen behind Brazil, China and India as the preferred place to invest, according to a quarterly survey conducted last month of 1,408 investors, analysts and traders who subscribe to Bloomberg. Emerging markets also attracted more money from share offerings than industrialized nations last quarter for the first time in at least a decade, Bloomberg data show.
Room to Ease
Indonesia, India, China and Poland are the developing economies least vulnerable to a U.S. slowdown, according to a Sept. 14 study based on trade ties by HSBC Holdings Plc economists. China, Russia and Brazil also are among nations with more room than industrial countries to ease policies if a U.S. slowdown does weigh on their growth, according to a policy- flexibility index designed by the economists, who include New York-based Pablo Goldberg.
“Emerging economies kept their powder relatively dry, and are, for the most part, in a position where they could act countercyclically if needed,” the HSBC group said.
Links to developing countries are helping insulate some companies against U.S. weakness. Swiss watch manufacturer Swatch Group AG and tire maker Nokian Renkaat of Finland are among the European businesses that should benefit from trade with nations such as Russia and China where consumer demand is growing, according to BlackRock Inc. portfolio manager Alister Hibbert.
“There’s a lot of life in the global economy,” Hibbert, said at a Sept. 8 presentation to reporters in London.
Asset Bubbles
The increasing focus on emerging markets may present challenges for their policy makers as the flow of money into their economies risks fanning inflation, asset bubbles and currency appreciation. Countries from South Korea to Thailand have already intervened to weaken their currencies, along with taking steps to restrict capital inflows.
Stephen Roach, nonexecutive Asia chairman for Morgan Stanley, remains skeptical of decoupling. He links the optimism to a snapback in global trade from a record 11 percent slide in 2009. As that fades amid sluggish demand from advanced economies, emerging markets that rely on exports for strength will “face renewed and formidable headwinds,” he said.
“Decoupling is still a dream in much of the developing world,” said Roach, who also teaches at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
‘Year of Recoupling’
The Goldman Sachs economists argue history is on their side. The U.K., Australia and Canada all continued growing amid the U.S. recession of 2001 as the technology-stock bust passed them by, while America’s 2006-2007 housing slowdown inflicted little pain outside its borders, they said. The shift came when the latter morphed into a financial crisis, prompting Goldman Sachs to declare in December 2007 that 2008 would be the “year of recoupling.”
The argument finds favor with Neal Soss, New York-based chief economist at Credit Suisse. While the supply of dollars and letters of credit that fuel international commerce dried up during the turmoil, that isn’t a problem now, so the rest of the world can cope with a weaker U.S., he said.
“Decoupling was a good idea then and is a good idea now,” Soss said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Simon Kennedy at skennedy4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story John Fraher at jfraher@bloomberg.net
.®2010 BLOOMBERG L.P. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Dalton Camp's Crystal Ball
Dale, in 1976, I had lunch with a man who predicted this collapse of the middle class.
His name was Dalton Camp, who died in 2003. Camp was the media director for the Conservative Party of Canada, and he also ran the Camp Associates advertising agency in Toronto. He clearly knew his market research.
I have not forgotten his prediction! We are now living it.
Camp also expressed concern about institutional failure. He said it is very dangerous for people to lose confidence, faith, trust in their systems of government, economics, politics, etc. In fact, he said, he went into politics in Canada to make sure it did not experience institutional failure!
I have not forgotten this comment. He said he was in World War II, and Germans were shooting at him in Europe. He started to wonder about how he got into this situation. His conclusion was institutional failure of the government in Germany after World War I and its aftermath!
Shortly before she died in 1984, the famous American historian Barbara Tuchman gave an interview. Bill Moyers asked her what her greatest concern for America is, was. She answered, "Institutional failure." She said American had lost the value of "honor," the good opinion of decent people. The result would lead to institutional failure, the lack of trust by the American people in their system.
Note Tuchman and Camp agree. Institutional failure creates a vacuum into which the devil can jump.
The Tea Parties are an expression of this growing disconnect. The State of Vermont has activists who want to pull it out of the Union of states! When this kind of stuff emerges, there is a serious disconnect between the system and the people in it.
I shall never forget that lunch with Dalton Camp. I was going to write his biography; last night, I discovered another person has beaten me to it. I shall have to buy and read it now in any case.
Watch this business about institutional failure. It is very real; it could sadly happen in the near future.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Canada - US - Water Wars
Debbi, your research paper on the growing shortage of potable (drinkable) water on earth is very important. We likely will have water wars in the future. For instance, the Southwest of the USA has no water. How much are we in Wisconsin willing to let them drain off our water tables and the Great Lakes? Your humble servant here would send none, unless the end-users of the water paid for it, good and hard. Water is more valuable than oil in the long run. Also, Canada is fearful of our tapping into its water resources - for free or at low cost. The Pentagon in fact has done "war gaming" scenarios and strategies on how we will respond to this growing shortage of potable water with armed force.
Will we ever be able to solve the worlds water problem is something that every nation should be working on. The problem is world wide, not just here in the
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Canada backs away from war with Iran.
The danger of the USA and Israel going to war with Iran in the near future became very real March 30-31, 2010 with the following two, connected announcements.
1) Canada yesterday announced the withdrawal of its coalition soldiers from Afghanistan. The mass news media in the USA has not carried this decision.
2) President Obama announced suddenly today that we are now going to drill oil in formerly restricted offshore areas. This counters his campaign promises and alienates part of his base.
The timing of the two messages is this.
1. Canada does not want to be on the ground in Afghanistan when war spreads to Iran, so it finds itself at war with a country that has not harmed it.
2. The USA put Iran on notice that we do not need its oil if we go to war with it.
The fallout will include the following:
1. The military draft will return to the USA.
2. Terrorism against the USA will escalate inside and outside the USA.
3. Distraction of the American people from the economic Depression on its way.
We are closer to danger today, March 31, 2010 than most Americans realize.
Monday, January 18, 2010
The Maple Leaf Forever - Canada's Future
The Maple Leaf Forever – Paul Rux, Ph.D.
Ramsay Cook, a professor of Canadian history at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, gave a series of guest lectures at Harvard University on Canadian-American relations.
Cook, in fact, argued for American empire, because as long as America is fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc. it has little time and energy left to mess with Canada!
While the American cat is away the Canadian mouse can play!
Cook argues when America reaches the limits of its capacity to mess with other countries, it will start to return its focus homeward, which will make America dangerous to Canada, for it is on our doorstep.
Cook pointed out how the Romans reached limits of expansion when they ran into German tribes along the Rhine River. Cook believes America is going to reach such limits to expansion, also, good and hard.
Your professor by the way earned a M.A. in Canadian History from the University of Toronto; this has provided him with a unique perspective on America. It helps him to step outside our media bubbles and to gain perspectives from a "distance."
I share Ramsay Cook because he provides a highly creative insight into our American history as it may impact his country. He also draws comparisons with Rome, which seem to fit.
His lectures at Harvard subsequently appeared in a book entitled "The Maple Leaf Forever."
- Dr. Rux
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Warren Buffet invests in a trend forecast.
The November 3, 2009 issue of the Wisconsin State Journal, published in Madison, Wisconsin, featured in its business section a story on how Warren Buffett, the second richest person in the USA, wants to purhcase an American railroad system, the second largest in the USA. He is willing to spend over $32 billion to purchase it. This caught my attention, because Buffett has focused on real estate in the past, not transportation. Therefore, I "drilled down" in the article.
Toward its end two facts jumped off the page. One, Buffet forecasts a huge surge in the price of oil, which will diminish the value of trucking as a source of delivery. Two, his proposed railroad acquisition is one of the major backbones for transporting food from the USA to export to China.
How does this apply to Canada?
First, railroads are central to the history of Canada. For instance, the late Pierre Berton's National Dream told the story of the building of the trans-continental Canadian National Railway which "stitched" together the provinces of Canada from sea to sea. This infrastructure still runs east and west, and Vancouver, British Columbia is the logical terminus for this railway system. Vancouver is Canada's gateway to Asia. Canada also has surplus food for export to Asia. Note how this trade goes east and west, not north and south.
If Buffett thinks the future of the economy is with China, which has money galore to spend, unlike the bankrupted USA, Canada, too, because of its railroads can profit from this trend.
Second, Buffet's forecast for a surge in the price of oil ought to enhance the value of the oil in Canada, e.g. the Alberta tar sands. Canada can profit from this surge if the good people of the USA can somehow wrest control of its government from the vampires on Wall Street and in Washington. These vampires work for international oil corporations, not the US people, and are at the drivers of the endless American overseas wars for oil in the Middle East. Of course, China, too needs oil, and it can pay "cash on the barrel" for it. Canada has railroads to move the oil.
In short, the future of Canada's prosperity is east-west, not north-south, trade. Its railroads, food surplus and oil can service Asia as surely as Warren Buffet's proposed railroad system.
Canada has looked to its transcontinental railroad system to hold the country together politically. History is going to repeat. Canada will look also to its transcontinental railroad network to reinvent its economy and detach it from the U.S., which is an economic Titanic.
Toward its end two facts jumped off the page. One, Buffet forecasts a huge surge in the price of oil, which will diminish the value of trucking as a source of delivery. Two, his proposed railroad acquisition is one of the major backbones for transporting food from the USA to export to China.
How does this apply to Canada?
First, railroads are central to the history of Canada. For instance, the late Pierre Berton's National Dream told the story of the building of the trans-continental Canadian National Railway which "stitched" together the provinces of Canada from sea to sea. This infrastructure still runs east and west, and Vancouver, British Columbia is the logical terminus for this railway system. Vancouver is Canada's gateway to Asia. Canada also has surplus food for export to Asia. Note how this trade goes east and west, not north and south.
If Buffett thinks the future of the economy is with China, which has money galore to spend, unlike the bankrupted USA, Canada, too, because of its railroads can profit from this trend.
Second, Buffet's forecast for a surge in the price of oil ought to enhance the value of the oil in Canada, e.g. the Alberta tar sands. Canada can profit from this surge if the good people of the USA can somehow wrest control of its government from the vampires on Wall Street and in Washington. These vampires work for international oil corporations, not the US people, and are at the drivers of the endless American overseas wars for oil in the Middle East. Of course, China, too needs oil, and it can pay "cash on the barrel" for it. Canada has railroads to move the oil.
In short, the future of Canada's prosperity is east-west, not north-south, trade. Its railroads, food surplus and oil can service Asia as surely as Warren Buffet's proposed railroad system.
Canada has looked to its transcontinental railroad system to hold the country together politically. History is going to repeat. Canada will look also to its transcontinental railroad network to reinvent its economy and detach it from the U.S., which is an economic Titanic.
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