Jim "Cap-in-hand" Flaherty's disingenuous ploy flops, suprized?

There is nothing more cute, more heart filling, or tear-jerking than to see an honest politician consult and confer with the country to determine the course of the economy. Of course, I didn't see that today. History repeated itself today when finance minister and Mike Harris throwback #4 humiliated the Canadian public with his CEO's Pet approach to economic policy. His plea to manufacturers to reduce prices for the changing value of the Candian dollar was nothing more than a dramatic ruse.

If your memory needs a jog, please refer back to March of this year, when NDP MPs on the finance committee fought for ATM fees to be eliminated. Flaherty, indeed cap-in-hand, went to the big banks and asked them to consider it voluntarily. They told him to stuff it.

However, I think he knew that-- afterall he needed a clear political conscience. Flaherty can now say he's worked on it, and brought the issue to a resolution. It's the disengenuous and cynical behaviour of the entire Conservative government which gridlocks progressive minority opposition motions and committee work in political spin. If this tactic is familiar, it's because it's been used in Ontario by Liberals to sabotage the Proportional Representation movement. Across the nation do-nothing, lassais-faire, and morally bankrupt policians are doing nothing in a whole new way

What's particularly telling is the timing with which Flaherty took to making a demogogary of the public interest. The soaring dollar has been on what might be a short-lived vacation above the USD- it may hold, it may not and please don't ask me for predictions. Today however it took a tumble and inched (metrically of course) closer to the USD. Whether it was a good idea to lower costs or not is irrelevant, because Flaherty knew what their answer would be either way. We're nolonger sitting at the same table as the CCCE, Retail Council of Canada, or the Canadian mega-Banks-- we're begging at the front gate, and Flaherty is the security guard.