Hope? Change?

The sobering opening lines of a Financial Post report on international interventionism:

We are living in unusual times indeed when Canada emerges as the last bastion of free-market capitalism.

But with Barack Obama advocating a barrage of new U. S. financial regulation in the wake of the credit crunch and the Europeans pushing for a remake of the entire financial world order, the home of the milk marketing board, the wheat board and the liquor-monopoloy [sic]-conspiracy board has become the chief defender of the invisible hand.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, was keen to press the "don't go overboard" message at the G20 finance ministers meeting in Brazil this weekend.

Using a wholly Canadian metaphor in Sao Paulo, Mr. Flaherty said now is not the time to engage in a round of "constitutional" talks regarding the global financial system.

"Now is the time to putting out the fire and not to be planning grand new schemes," he told reporters.

Not to give Flaherty any undue praise here. Like any government financial administrator, he's angling to expand his own regulatory powers at home and keep the French and the rest of the euros away from his tax-producing livestock.

However, let me reiterate that although things are bad here (I think it was TJIC who said living in Canada must be like living on one gigantic college campus), looking at that suffocating nanny / police state across the pond and Barack Obama inheriting George W. Bush's executive powers south of the border makes me content to stick around in this relatively unexciting, if left-leaning, neighbourhood while the noisier parts of the world continue to wig out. Pretty bad though, when the best hope for your regional political bosses is that they fail to adopt the thundering statist rhetoric of their counterparts.
# 10:01 AM