Conrad Black: As We Enter a New Year, Canada Urgently Needs Fiscal Responsibility, Not Continued Borrowing and Spending

Commentary Most knowledgeable commentators on the Canadian economy as we enter a new year seem to think we are completing a familiar cycle that everyone in or about middle age has been through in this country before. Governments, here and elsewhere, tend to believe that “deficits eliminate themselves,” or other such stupefyingly Panglossian nonsense, and governments can borrow and spend money with self-flattering enthusiasm and assurance that inflation will not result. Inflation does result, and has. Despite the fact that every one-point rise in interest rates produces a half-point rise in inflation, the politicians go to the corner like naughty schoolchildren while the central bankers raise interest rates, pouring gasoline on the fires of inflation until they induce a sharp reduction in economic activity, which creates a good deal of unemployment and mortgage calls six months before there is any moderation in the rate of inflation....