Budget 2009: Where from here?

Well, it appears that the Budget will pass, thought Michael Ignatieff is being coy, suggesting that he's going to "sleep on it" before deciding, on Wedesday - what the Liberal response will be. However, with the Liberal party still in some dissaray, and recent polls showing 60% of Canadians want the budget passed - it would be possible political suicide for Ignatieff to vote against the budge and risk an election.

So - if in fact I'm correct, well, where do we go from here? Will massive spending really change the economy? Here's a hint: nope.

Canada's economy is, unfortunately, a relatively minor player in the world economy, and unless the U.S. economy begins to kickstart, we're not likely to see much improvement here. Now - if oil price rise, that would certainly help B.C., Saskatchewan and Alberta - and to some extent Newfoundland - but Ontario and Quebec will continue to be in difficult times until the U.S. improves - and it's anyone's guess as to whether Barack Obama, and his flurry of changes will be good or bad. Somehow, I think his apparent "commitment" to reduce C02 is probably going to just stagnate any gains that stimulus spending might have created.

GMC and Chrysler alone are probably good as dead.. consider the plan of spending billions of dollars to help them out, and then capitulating to California, and other states, demands, to ramp up emission controls - certainly going to kill the sales of SUV's, Trucks and larger cars - the only advantage the big 3 hold over Toyota, Nissan and Honda. Might as well save your money, and offer nothing to bail them out, letting them die a dignified death.