For an alleged economic wizard, Prime Minister Mark Carney has been rather underwhelming on the fiscal file since assuming office. In fact, he has appeared outright inept, and the condo bailout in BC demonstrates it in spades. If the actions of the Carney government can’t be attributed to ineptitude, it signals something much worse.The condo bailout is just the latest in a string of government actions that amount to simply tossing billions of tax dollars at issues and hoping they solve themselves. Developers built thousands of overpriced condo units in Vancouver and found themselves stuck with unsold units. Over a third of these apartments were priced at over a million dollars plus exorbitant, ongoing condo fees, so it shouldn’t have been surprising to many that nobody was snapping up these units.The proper approach to such a situation would be to let the developers sink. They could either reduce the price of the condominiums to an affordable range, or they could go bankrupt and let the next owners of the units do what must be done. It is the ultimate and simplest of market corrections. It offers a lesson to investors and developers on the hazards of building overpriced products, and it brings the prices down for consumers.Any grade ten economics student could figure out those basic principles of supply and demand.Unfortunately, those principles appear to be beyond Mark Carney, who has decided to take your money and bail out the developers with it to the tune of billions of dollars. Now, incompetent developers get rewarded for their actions, taxpayers get screwed, and housing prices remain out of reach for common citizens of BC. Everybody loses. Well, everybody except some well-connected developers..So, is Mark Carney completely incompetent with economics, or was there a benefit to him and his party that can’t be seen? The optics of it all certainly don’t do him any favours. In fact, the whole affair stinks to high heaven.What is the long-term plan of the Carney government to get Canada’s failing economy on track? While GDP per capita for Americans has reached nearly $90,000 USD, Canada’s remains mired at $55,000 USD and sinking in comparison. Canada has entered a technical recession while Carney continues to maintain policies that put us there. Namely, the Trudeau-era policies of shutting in Western Canadian resources. Meanwhile, billions are being poured into bailouts and Laurentian vanity projects such as the grotesquely expensive Alto high-speed rail boondoggle, currently priced at $90 billion and certain to rise in cost further. The project hasn’t laid an inch of track, but already the executives are slurping up millions of tax dollars in bonuses. Nice work if you can get it.The new $25 billion slush fund called “Canada Strong” is to be directed to investing in Canadian “strategic interests.” How many of those “strategic interests” happen to overlap with Carney’s personal financial interests or those of his compatriots?.Over $180 billion is to be poured into military procurements over the next few years. You can almost hear the scurrying of the little feet of the hundreds of lobbyists in Ottawa working to take bites out of that fund. Billions are being dumped into the Canadian Arctic, and some of that investment has already been effective in buying the floor-crossing love of a Northern MP. It remains to be seen how the common citizen on the tundra will see benefits.Carney brought back the $5,000 rebate for EVs that nobody wants. When coupled with his deal to import Chinese EVs into Canada, though, incentivizing the purchase of them with tax dollars makes perfect sense. To connected insiders on the deal anyway.In a little more than a year, the Carney government has managed to make the Trudeau administration appear fiscally responsible. That’s no small feat..Carney has massively increased spending and the deficit while maintaining a chokehold on resource development and exports. Costs to service the Canadian debt continue to rise while the productivity of the nation continues to drop. It’s a bleak and ugly fiscal picture.Now we must ask ourselves: is Carney really this economically incompetent? Or is his administration simply in it to take the money and run? In either scenario, things are not looking good for the financial future of Canadians.Unless you have connections with the Carney government.
