In what seems like an attempt to discredit surging Jack Layton the Globe and Mail published a 'blog' article claiming that the NDP might end the independence of the Bank of Canada by interfering with its decision-making.

This ‘architecture’ attack – aiming at a building block of the country – to try to derail a surging candidate just before the vote did not deserve to be in the paper without a chance for the target to respond before it was published.

Jack did respond through other media -- strangely linked in this article 'as I was writing' -- and unequivocally said that while he would like interest rates to stay low – what Canadians with a mortgage wouldn’t – the decision belonged to the governor of the Bank of Canada.

Shame on the Globe.

Globe and Mail – Layton Should Stay Clear of Monetary Policy
In my recent post on the prospects of a possible NDP government, I came to the conclusion that not very much would change; their platform had none of the transformational elements that had been a feature of so many NDP campaigns in the past.

Articles also on pork prices, the terrible debt build up in the high income countries, the Fed and little inflation, how America has changed, whether Talk TV will make it in the UK, China's future, bad ideas, and why Michael Ignatieff failed.

Why pork prices are rising.

Wall Street Journal -- It's Getting Harder to Bring Home the Bacon
Bobbie Jean Pope, the 81-year-old mother of C. Larry Pope of Newport News, Va., can't afford her bacon.

John Mauldin on the headwinds from the endgames.

Pdf below -- Endgame Headwinds

 

The Economist wonders, will the Fed tolerate a little bit of inflation?

Economist – Will the Fed Let America Catch Up?
THERE are two more monetary policy points I'd like to make before letting the discussion of the April Fed meeting end.

America isn’t white and Christian anymore.

New York Times – The Other
To watch Mitt Romney these days, he of the creased blue jeans and family that looks like it came from a Betty Crocker mold, circa 1957, it’s hard to see a product of one of the most radical social and sexual experiments in American history.

Related.

New York Times – Trumpery
The Presidential candidacy as joke is a perennial sideshow along the raucous midway of the American political carnival. Sometimes the candidate—Will Rogers (1928), Gracie Allen (1940), Pat Paulsen (1968 through 1996), Stephen Colbert (2008)—is a fully qualified professional humorist.

 

Oh dear. Talk TV is coming to the United Kingdom if the rules change.

Financial Times – Prepare to be Shocked
In November 2008, the Sun columnist Jon Gaunt, whose passionately opinionated career has seen him veer from an engagement with the far left in his twenties to the populist right in middle age, called Michael Stark, a councillor in the London Borough of Redbridge, a “Nazi” and “an ignorant pig” on the TalkSport radio channel, on which he was a regular broadcaster.

What if China did adjust to less investment-exports and more consumption-imports?

Michael Pettis – China Recycling and US Interest Rates
I mentioned in last week’s blog entry that during my trips to New York, Washington and Hangzhou in the past two weeks one of the common themes was concern about rising debt levels and weaknesses in the banking sector. 

Seemed like a good idea at the time.

Charlie Fell – Bankers Behaving Badly
The Emerald Isle’s ill-fated love affair with bricks and mortar of all varieties has been well documented by now in best-selling books by those who claim to have anticipated the meltdown, those who protest their bullish prognostications were misinterpreted, and those who have capitalised on the public’s need for explanations. 

When Michael Ignatieff’s political obituary is written it will start with the Tories successful first punch. What they should really write about is how much the country changed in his absence, for better and worse.

Leader Post -- Ignatieff hobbled by Tory ads, Parliament
When the Liberal party enticed a media-savvy Harvard professor to return home to Canada nearly six years ago, many anticipated the emergence of a great political thinker in the image of other successful Canadian politicians from their political family over the past century.