The Harper Government's Secret Bank Bailout

[Regorium]

Originally Posted by Azure

CCPA might be the NDP's thinktank, but I honestly have no problem that they brought this up again. It seems to be all over the news right now too.

It is the job of the opposition to challenge the government. Even if they attempt to make a new story from old news. At least they're bringing it to the public's attention.

The opposite would be the US, where it seems like nobody has a clue what happened to the billions they spent bailing out their banks.

Generally I would agree. A critical, normal public should have the following thought process:

1) Shock! What!? The Government screwed us! This is absolute garbage!
2) Let me leaf through this 46 page report, what kind of lies has our government been feeding us!
3) Wait, a lot of this report is telling me what I already know. We knew about these mortgage buyouts, and nothing is overstated.
4) Hmm, my original reaction was not correct. That's fine, I have learned something today.

However, it's unfortunate that anytime something with any semblance to politics comes out, it's basically the following:

1) Oh my god. *leading party* is a terrible party. Lies and more lies! I refuse to listen to any other viewpoint because I support *other party*
2) Go back to #1

There is no benefit to bringing this up again, other than to create the reaction you're seeing right now - an uninformed public that uses CBC's headline as the basis for all of their arguments. Well played by the NDP politically, but it isn't sound science, economics, and is generally a gargantuan waste of time.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Regorium

Generally I would agree. A critical, normal public should have the following thought process:

1) Shock! What!? The Government screwed us! This is absolute garbage!
2) Let me leaf through this 46 page report, what kind of lies has our government been feeding us!
3) Wait, a lot of this report is telling me what I already know. We knew about these mortgage buyouts, and nothing is overstated.
4) Hmm, my original reaction was not correct. That's fine, I have learned something today.

However, it's unfortunate that anytime something with any semblance to politics comes out, it's basically the following:

1) Oh my god. *leading party* is a terrible party. Lies and more lies! I refuse to listen to any other viewpoint because I support *other party*
2) Go back to #1

There is no benefit to bringing this up again, other than to create the reaction you're seeing right now - an uninformed public that uses CBC's headline as the basis for all of their arguments. Well played by the NDP politically, but it isn't sound science, economics, and is generally a gargantuan waste of time.

Generally we all assume that the public is too stupid to realize that they're being played by politicians, but that is what politicians do, and we won't ever get away from it.

That being said, going through the report it does seem like a rather ridiculous waste of time.

I swear we had a discussion on all that stuff on here years ago.

[longsuffering]

This thread is boring without any conspiracy theorists or Occupiers to work up some outrage and indignation!

[IliketoPuck]

1. The banks required short term liquidity,

so

2. Canadian government stepped in and gave them some.

and

3. Loans have been repaid, and the Government will make $$ on the fully insured mortgage backed securities.

Nothing to see here.

A classic case of reporting less than the whole story in order to get a reaction from people who don't understand how things work.

I loved the part about the study using "estimates" since they weren't given access to the true figures. I would "estimate" that the study sucks.