5/4/2023 0 Comments Farrago of wasp plutocrats“The self-interested, and ultimately self-destructive, herd mentality on Wall Street and in the City of London shaped policy around the world but it didn’t prevail everywhere. And she credits Paul Martin, as Liberal finance minister in the 1990s, for resisting calls to deregulate in Canada as well. She points to the 2008 financial crisis as an example of how extraordinarily wealthy bankers and captains of finance convinced governments around the globe to relax regulation of their activities, which wound up costing governments trillions in bailouts. Praises Canada for resisting deregulation calls Here are some highlights from the book, which offer some insight into her views on deficits, taxes, joblessness and government regulation of the financial sector.įreeland approvingly summarizes the warning of some economists: “In an age of super-wealth, we need to be constantly alert to efforts by the elite to get rich by using their political muscle to increase their share of the pre-existing pie, rather than by adding value to the economy and thus increasing the size of the pie overall.” With Freeland now the federal finance minister, it’s worth revisiting "Plutocrats" for glimpses into her thinking as she takes charge of plotting Canada’s economic recovery in the face of a still-evolving pandemic, double-digit unemployment and a sea of red ink. The book meshed with and helped inform Trudeau’s thinking: the need for economic policies that would bolster the middle class and shrink the ever-widening gap between the wealthiest one per cent and everyone else.Īnd it was reflected in the 2015 platform, which promised a tax cut for middle-income earners and an enhanced child benefit, while hiking taxes on the wealthiest. Trudeau was so impressed by it that he spent the next eight months trying to persuade the veteran financial journalist to abandon her job as a managing director at Thomson Reuters and join the Liberal team.Įven before she won a Toronto byelection in the fall of 2013, Trudeau named her to co-chair his economic advisory council, which would be instrumental in crafting the Liberals’ winning 2015 election platform. The tome chronicled how globalization and the technology revolution has created a new class of uber-wealthy people, “a nation unto themselves” who wield outsized political clout that has produced economic policies designed to make them ever richer while incomes for everyone else stagnate. OTTAWA - Justin Trudeau first met Chrystia Freeland at a 2012 Toronto signing for her award-winning book, "Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else."
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