I sent the following friendly email to Fareed Zakaria today at comments@fareedzakaria.com in response to a recent article he wrote for Newsweek at http://www.newsweek.com/id/183670.
Updates and analysis to follow in the coming days.
Mr. Zakaria,
I wanted to bring to your attention some information in light of statements you made in your February 7, 2009 Newsweek article, “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative”. You wrote:
“Guess which country, alone in the industrialized world, has not faced a single bank failure, calls for bailouts or government intervention in the financial or mortgage sectors. Yup, it’s Canada.”
From an article in one of our national newspapers in Canada, the Financial Post (http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=1223718), they reported that a provision in the federal budget announced on January 27 — over a week before your article, served to “boost the mortgage purchase program to $125-billion from $75-billion.”
Therefore, not only have there been calls for government intervention in the financial or mortgage sectors in Canada, there have been several major government interventions in those sectors since October 2008.
Adjusting for the difference in GDP (PPP), a $125 billion government intervention in Canada is equivalent to an over $1.25 trillion intervention by the U.S. government.
Also, the third-largest national party in Canada, the NDP, have repeatedly called for government intervention in the financial sector before and during the current economic crisis. They made a big public spectacle in 2007 calling for the elimination of ATM fees, and in 2008 calling for a cap on credit card rates, and those positions have since made their way into the party’s official platform.
Regards,
[the author of this site]
[...] the open letter I wrote him on February 23, 2009, in response to his recent article in [...]