Thomas Edison said 100 years ago that: “If a nation can issue a bond, it can issue a dollar bill. But the Bill will aid the artisan, while the bond will fatten the usurer,” and this just about says it all.
The deception at the root of this business is shown by the extraordinary secrecy which surrounds it.
After 40 years successful use, the Bank of Canada’s loan function was totally abandoned, and is never even mentioned now by any elected politician or party.
Trying to get an explanation for the change is an exercise in futility; the shutters come down, and silence reigns.
But the arrows point decisively to that other boondoggle — the never-questioned private funding system for political parties, which enables very wealthy donors to effectively buy the parties and the policies they want.
Put this pernicious system alongside a perpetually unrepresentative voting process, and it becomes very clear why there has been absolutely no action for decades on these fundamental faults.
Six advanced nations have already gone into default and at least three more great nations totter on the edge, all supporting basically the same government funding policies and far-from representative electoral systems.
A boiling resentment is erupting. Is it really beyond our MPs’ capacity to connect the dots, and do something before the lid blows? It really is up to them; party brass will not change.
Russ Vinden, Errington