It is pretty clear now that the large stimulus funding that almost every Western government injected into the economy in 2009 has worked.  With the financial meltdown that we saw in the late fall of 2008, something had to be done to get money moving again.  Slowly, we saw economic growth again with positive numbers over the last few quarters.  It’s only now that there seems to be some real concern in the US about the economy stagnating.  Some people say double-dip, others are just saying dip.  With prices not moving up it certainly has many within the US Federal Reserve and the US government very worried.

We haven’t heard much about credit being froze up lately.  However, that was a buzzword in late 2008 as everybody was holding their wallets tightly. Of course at the time it was government’s job to loosen up credit.  Over the interceding time, businesses have conserved capital and built-up cash reserves.  They are still reticent to spend in many ways and you can’t blame them.  The only problem with that is it’s bad for the economy.  If we could only get that money moving again, we’d have much more positive economic growth numbers.

This struck me the other day when I read a Globe and Mail report on the behavior of Canadian banks.  The first paragraph of the article said it best.  It said that the head of Canada’s largest bank was concerned about the sputtering economic rebound has dealt the industry a tricky dilemma: how to boost lending when solid borrowers are increasingly hard to find.  In essence what the article was saying was that the demand for credit particularly among corporate clients had dried up amid the difficult economy.  So our Canadian banks were thinking about lending money to poorer risks in order to try to get back profits.  In other words, to try to create demand for credit.  It seems so strange to read about.

It is kind of an interesting scenario.  Banks over the last 18 months have set aside money to take care of losses caused by the financial meltdown of 2008.  However, Canadian banks don’t really lose money, in fact their profits just get a little bit less but of course still well over $1 billion.  So you can understand how if they are finding it difficult to find people to lend money to, maybe the economy isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be.

The problem seems to be all of this cash everybody is sitting on.  The banks are desperate to grow their asset base to compete against others around the world but with interest rates so low they will not necessarily get paid for the risk that they might assume.  It’s hard to feel sorry for our Canadian banks with their billion dollar profits.  Needless to say, their attitude and behavior is usually a good barometer for how good the economy is doing.  Seeing them starve a little bit in their own eyes is a bit telling. Maybe, just maybe, they might change their attitude.

Of course the big problem remains in the US economy.  Problems down south seem to be much more entrenched than they are in Canada.  The employment rate remains around 9% and there doesn’t seem to be any immediate hope of that going down.  You look at the American public debt; the war in Afghanistan and the maddening deflationary tendencies within the US economy and it’s troubling.  It will always be a problem for Canada.  Simply put, for us to have a high standard of living with big economic growth numbers Canadians need Americans to thrive and right now they are not doing that.

The way that this is cured in 2010 is to boost consumer confidence.  However, after what consumers have been through how do you do that?  It can be done slowly over time and that is exactly what is happening.  Our Canadian banks might be complaining about a lack of demand for credit but their credibility is zero with their billion dollar profits and their skeletons in the closet.  I am one Canadian who thinks maybe they can afford to take a few more risks.  I think it would be good for the economy.  I think it would be good for Canada.  It would also be good for the banks even if they do have those profits shaved.  Perish the thought I know.  Doing the right thing has never been so obvious.

While doing my rounds of walking the streets of Chicago and Minneapolis last week I had a lot of time to consider things.  As many of you know I follow four women around most of the time, which at this stage of life means I do a lot of sitting and waiting.  So last week in Chicago I started to count the number of smart phones walking by.  Simply put the number of smart phones going by me overwhelmed my senses.  It seems at least from the small sample sizes I was taking, a tremendous number of people are addicted to the technology.

I began to think of this last week because of the uneven economic numbers coming out of the United States.  Housing starts were about the same as they were in July, which weren’t a good number and many people on economic pages talking about the real specter of a double dip recession in the United States.  With their unemployment rate still unacceptably high, the American economy remains in the doldrums compared to its cousin up north.  The proverbial question is, when is it going to get better and when will American consumers start spending again?

I know I have a tendency to over analyze these things.  For instance some people like watching movies, I like watching professional basketball, farming and analyzing economic numbers.  So I like to think I don’t take these numbers a little bit too far.  Needless to say, I started to relate these uneven American economic numbers to the number of smart phones I saw on the streets last week in Chicago and Minneapolis.  On one hand while the American economists were telling me their economy remains bad, the optics in front of me were telling me everybody with a smart phone were paying the high bills associated with them.  What’s up with that?

I asked this question of one of my editors.  I told him it didn’t quite add up that I was seeing all the smart phones while at the same time the American economy was not booming and in fact was getting slightly worse.  He wrote me back and told me he was in a very high-end restaurant in Birmingham Alabama the other night and he had the same feeling.  However he cautioned me by saying that in economic good times may be more high-end restaurants would have more and more people in them.  In other words maybe our sample size of him in one high-end restaurant and me on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago didn’t quite add up to a good sample.

I understood what he meant.  Still, the optics of seeing almost everybody with a smart phone had me wondering.  As many of you know I like to think of myself as being on the ground floor of computer technology.  So I’ve had a real fight within myself to accept and embrace Smartphone’s.  The reason is their expense, which is like extortion in Canada.  Despite my skepticism, it is pretty obvious as I look ahead that many of these people are using this technology to not only cut costs but to make their life better.  I read about a recent example of this in a recent USA Today newspaper.

In this article it talked about how transit authorities across the United States and I assume as well in Canada were developing iPhone apps to minimize the transportation snafus amongst their users.  In other words people could use their smart phones to see where the nearest transit stop was or how near the next train was to their transit stop.  There is also the GPS technology within these phones to make it more efficient mapping for your car through the city or countryside.  So users of this technology cut their costs and use their time more efficiently.  That’s way different than playing pogo man on your iPhone.  It’s adding up to real dollars and it’s obvious at least to the many people I observed in Chicago, it makes sense for them.

The question is how do the optics of all these smart phones sync with the tough US economy?  You might argue the “digital divide” just got a little bit wider.  The guy holding down a traditional job in the US economy might not necessarily have a smart phone versus the guy who has a smart phone is making money using it.  Being able to put it in everybody’s hands might be the perfect storm.  That surely will depend on the American economy finally getting back to robust health.  The faster that happens, the better.

The question is, “what’s it doing to us”?  With the increasing “creep” of these mobile technologies into our society, what’s it mean to the workplace and to the way people interact?  Has it become too intrusive with expectations getting a bit out of whack for when we are “available.”  How will our workplaces in the future change if people are expected to be available “24/7″?  How is our work changing us, if we let these technologies creep into our personal space to simply catch up on the work you might face “Monday morning?”  Staying connected might not be the panacea we had once thought it to be.

Keep in mind much of this might be a “generational thing.”  Younger people in their teens, 20’s and early 30’s have certainly embraced this technology to inter-relate with others of their own generation.  The moments of waiting by the telephone have been replaced by a text, tweet or Facebook correspondence.  In fact “staying connected” is almost an extensions of consciousness, within this generation versus a privacy issue.

That said, I think presently “privacy issues” remain a very important aspect of this new communication.  From my perspective, online privacy is all about what you allow to happen.  Needless to say, not everybody sees it that way, or is even aware of it.  So it is a moving target moving forward.  For young people still reading this, keep it in mind.  Our new world of tweets, fried-ing and online profiles live forever.

For myself, I find the new world of “staying connected” a wonderful professional world for getting things done.  The connectivity of the internet and the Twitter experience has helped me.  As an early adapter of computer technology, I’ve been on the ground floor and on the way up ever since.  However, as I look ahead, I think the fusion of connectivity, social media, smart phones and other media devices has it limits.  There is a big difference between using the technology effectively and having the technology follow you around in an additive way.  We all have lives.  Let’s go climb a mountain and have fun today!

I say that because I think some of us are missing out on that world around us centred on “fresh air.”  Case in point, I had a friend of mine tell me about his experience of sending his kids out of the house for the afternoon.  His kids, constantly connected and online were driving him a bit crazy.  In his day, summer afternoons in Ontario were spent outside, having fun, interacting with other kids and exploring.  So he told the kids to get outside, not allowing them to come back in for a few hours.

The result was telling.  The kids were very upset, in fact didn’t know what to do outside, were very bored and wanted to come back inside to get their devices and stay connected.  I guess this is 2010.

It is what it is.  I dunno.  I think there is a balance.  That’s one reason why I don’t have a smart phone.  I don’t think I want to be that connected.  For instance, I’m a fairly heavy Twitter user, but I don’t want to tweet from a smart phone.  I don’t need to.  You can also show your location now while you tweet, but why would I want to do that?  Finding the “sweet spot” of staying connected continues to challenge.

In many ways this is like challenging a Tsunami with a bucket.  Simply put, the technology is here and it’ll only continue.  Keep in mind a big limitation to this technology in Canada is its cost.  Here smart phones whether it is a Blackberry or an iPhone are exorbitantly expensive, easily into the $100/month category.  Compare that to other countries and it’s off the chart.  It’s extortion at best and it limits the penetration of “staying connected” in the great White North.

The future will be more of the same, and more.  The key for technology companies is to mesh their inventions with human nature and provide it at a cost, which makes sense.  The key for users will be to use it effectively, but at the same time, have a life, get some fresh air.  There is a whole world out there, off line.  Skeptical, believe me, it’s true.

The other episode widely seen on TV was the woman going postal because she couldn’t get her Chicken McNuggets in the morning.  I know that bugs me too, but so far I haven’t got out of my car, reach into the window to cause mayhem.  I usually choose to come back later, and in fact I’m now living a healthier lifestyle, I don’t think I’ll try either.  I wonder what both these episodes say about our greater society?

I will leave that to my illustrious editor, mentor and good friend John Gardner.  My friend John is a conservative rebel, who I’m sure has an opinion about this but through his life has never acted this way even though I’m sure he’s had Steven Slater moments in the back of his mind.  I on the other hand am way too timid to get so out of hand.  However, I’m sure if we were all pushed on the right day we might dive into that window looking for those Chicken nuggets.

It looks now that Steven Slater will be getting his own new reality show.  It reminds me of that balloon boy episode that we saw last year in Colorado.  Apparently he has been offered some type of gig for people who quit in extravagant ways.  I hope it doesn’t spawn a cottage industry in flight attendants quitting when I am on the plane.

I do have somewhat of an insight on flight attendants in their duties.  Years ago I went out with the young lady who was a flight attendant.  She told me about the many challenges, long-distance phone bills and ungodly hours that she had to work.  That was a time when I think flying was somewhat more glamorous than it is today.  She was flying on planes from Canada to Europe; Steven Slater was doing the grunt commuter work in the United States.  If you have ever flown in the United States, like many people in southwestern Ontario have, it’s a different game.  Everything is bare bones including a small bag of pretzels tossed your way.

Of course we all have our airplane stories.  I will not buy a ticket on Air Canada because of my own story.  It’s too long to write about here but it’s a dilly.  Making a living in that environment in 2010 must be a real challenge.

The lady who wants her chicken McNuggets for breakfast was a bit of a different animal, as there was a little bit of mild violence involved.  I think that she was arrested. Needless to say both incidence show how ridiculous the human species can be when something snaps in our brain.

About four years ago, your loyal scribe was involved in quite a few farm protests, one of which was 10,000 strong in Ottawa.  There were many others, some of which were a third of that size but all of them involved “keeping your head” in volatile situations.  Thankfully, almost all the organizers realized that, taking great pains not to violate any societal codes.  I remember when the numbers grew so large in Ottawa, the police were nervous.  The farm leaders work with the police and at the end of the day there was even one request to pray for the police.  I often look back on that and think about the “civility” of the situation.  If we had chosen to we could have caused real problems.  However, our goal was to get an agricultural stabilization program, which was consistent and long-term.  So while there was great protest, there was also great civility.  It was a great example of respecting our societal differences with regard to what we wanted and the people around us protecting everybody.

I guess it means that none of us farmers in Ottawa that day got a role on a new reality TV series.  Maybe if we had dove head first through a Parliament buildings window with a couple of beers in hand, we’d get one.  Dunno.  What I do know is there is something very wrong about doing the wrong thing and possibly getting rewarded for it.  Steven Slater should have just put it in the rear view mirror and everybody else should too.

The local races in southwestern Ontario got a bit more interesting this past week when the Liberal candidate for Chatham-Kent Essex stepped aside.  So as far as I know there is no Liberal candidate in that riding or the neighboring riding of Lambton Kent Middlesex.   So we can expect some fresh faces to challenge the incumbent Conservative MPs.

In southwestern Ontario, the agriculture industry dominates the landscape.  With the recent recession taking its toll on the auto industry, the business of farming is increasingly the number one industry in southern Ontario.  The farm vote is tiny, but the differences is they all vote and when pressed, the farm population will mobilize en masse.  So if you want to win a rural riding in southwestern Ontario, it’s best to appeal to a farm audience.

Generally speaking, the southwestern Ontario farm economy is healthy compared to years past.  The high Canadian dollar has certainly challenged many aspects of livestock production but grain markets have remained buoyant.  This compared to the difficult times during the 2006 election means the farm community might not be as mobilized for the next election.

29% in the polls doesn’t give anybody a majority government.  The difficult part for the opposition parties is their support is spread out over the rest of English Canada.  When you take 50 seats from Quebec out of the equation and with the Green party support at 10% across Canada, no majority government is probable.  So in many ways an election in the fall is an endgame, with no winner.  However, getting our politicians to understand that when they smell blood is an endgame too.

The Liberal strategy should be to stand still and watch the Conservatives implode.  I’m not saying the Conservatives have a tendency to implode, but they surely like to take unnecessary risks, which I talked about recently in this column.  At a certain point, it will catch up with them and if the Liberals are smart they will take advantage.

Needless to say, we shouldn’t assume that all our political thinkers are smart.  For instance, do you remember the “carbon tax”, the mantra of the last Liberal campaign.  That was like spraying every voter with raid when liberal candidates knocked on doors.  The carbon tax didn’t sound good, didn’t look good and couldn’t be understood.  However, somebody in the Liberal party thought it would work.  The rest as they say is history, the Liberals got beat down and they’re still trying to get up.

The same thing happens in Ontario provincial politics.  Last election all John Tory and his Progressive Conservatives had to do was watch Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty and his Liberals implode.  Instead, they promised public funding to faith-based schools, effectively destroying their chances before they said hello.  I’m sure Dalton McGuinty and his merry band of Liberals couldn’t believe their luck.  All they had to do was stand aside and by default be the only reasonable option.

The sad part about all this is some candidates lose out because of some bonehead decision made at head office.  I have known many people who have run for office who would’ve been great as an MP or MPP.  Sometimes it’s all about timing and chance.  They are often wrong on the timing through no fault of their own.

In the next election it would not surprise me if it’s the last for both Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff.  If either political leader loses, there gone.  I expect Jack Layton to put up a great fight but I’m sure his health issues will determine his future.  Bloc leader Gillies Duceppe will probably come away with 50 seats out of Quebec, keeping the impossible dream alive.   At the end of the day there will be another minority.

In the rural southwestern Ontario ridings, Liberal candidates will jaw with Conservatives over Stephen Harper’s commitment to “scrap the CAIS program” said on a Chatham-Kent farm during the last election campaign in December 2005.  That program is the bane of farmers in Southwest Ontario.   Today in 2010, its still here despite those words, renamed Agristability.  All the Liberals have to do is tell the story and sit back.

What will happen?  I dunno, but I’m sure somebody will feel statesmanlike and start ad-libbing their own make-believe policies.   The polls will sway every which way.  I think it will be this fall.   I also think none of it will make much of a difference.

I know the economics of sweet corn quite well.  I’ve just finished marketing my sixth crop of sweet corn to the hungry minions on the north side of Chatham Kent.  It is a fascinating world and one where I use all the strategies I learned doing a Masters degree in Agricultural Economics.  There is nothing like standing across from a customer with a pile of sweet corn and talking them into paying $3.75 a dozen for it.

I bring this up because I recently heard about a new Ontario business, which takes produce from small producers and markets it to consumers in high-end restaurants.  I read about that at the same time wheat was making a 22-month high on the commodity markets.  For whatever reason, those two stories made me think about the economics of sweet corn.  At the end of the day whether it is produce sold to high-end restaurants or thousands of bushels on a bulk ship off the coast of Russia, it all boils down to one common denominator.  The food has to be cheap or nobody is going to buy it.

For many years now there’s been nothing much cheaper than wheat.  We grow wheat everywhere and the stars never come together to raise prices, except in the last five weeks where prices have risen two dollars a bushel.  In the case of those small producers producing food for high-end restaurants, good luck.  As soon as those high-end restaurants find a cheaper source, that whooshing sound you hear is your profits going down the drain.  There is something about “food” in North America that sends consumers “squirrely”.  Food must be cheap here or we don’t want it.

Sweet corn economics puts that theory into practice.  For instance, the conventional wisdom of sweet corn economics is to be the first to get the sweet corn to the market, charge high prices and then reduce those prices over time to maximize revenue.  The intent is to take advantage of our sweet corn deprived consumer’s insatiable appetite at the initial stages of harvest and then keeps them interested with lower-priced corn before they get “corned out”.   You see that strategy almost everywhere, except for me.  My corn costs $3.75 dozen and it never changes, never will.

Of course I think that I grow the best sweet corn in the world.  The only problem is I don’t spray my sweet corn to kill the corn borer.  So it is a race between me and the corn borer to see if I can get the sweet corn to market before there is a corn borer in every cob.   The corn borer always wins, although I usually outsmart him for about two weeks.  I tell some of my customers that story, dunno if they think it is cute or not.  To them, it’s all about $3.75.

I could outsmart the corn borer all season by spraying my corn with toxic pesticides.  That would make each cob of corn beautiful to the consumer, but 20 years down the way maybe that same consumer would glow-in-the-dark.  So that, and my inability to spray the sweet corn anyway, means I have to out-race the corn borer and grade out the bad cobs accordingly.   I call it being environmentally conscious, but I’m not sure if it resonates with my customers.  To them, it’s all about $3.75.

A few years ago, I really put my Masters degree in Agricultural Economics to work.  I thought that I would have a “customer appreciation day” on the last day of corn selling when the corn borer was about to win.  I decided to insert the word “free” in front of my “fresh sweet corn” sign.  I wanted to show my customers how much they were appreciated.  The only problem was the only people who stopped by that day, were people that I had never seen before.  To them, it wasn’t about the $3.75; it was about the “free” corn.

Of course my agricultural economics background gives me the advantage of knowing the nuances of the fundamentals of sweet corn supply and demand.  However, at the end of the day it seems to me the market is saying cheap, cheap, cheap.  Next year, will be no different.  I want to keep my customers happy.  To them, it’s all about $3.75.

So when Stephen Harper decided that we didn’t need the long form census to be mandatory anymore, I didn’t shudder in my boots.  Sure, you can make some very good arguments that’s a bad idea but as a burning political issue its zero.  I have been amazed over the past few weeks that some in our national media have made such a big deal of it.  People don’t care about the long form census; they care about their jobs, lives and personal well being.

There will still be a long form census; it now though will be voluntary.  The argument against making it voluntary has to do with all the good information that good statistics give us.  For instance as a student many many years ago, I could go to the basement of the University of Guelph and find out just about anything.  That information helped businesses and government manage trends, develop a policy and maybe even create a few jobs.  So making it voluntary will simply skew that information.  Critics will say the world will not be the same without the good statistical information garnered from a mandatory long form census.

The problem I see is not necessarily the end result of that policy change but more on why it was changed.  There have been many in the media over the last few weeks that have said that Stephen Harper is going back to his reform, libertarian roots looking at the census as an intrusion on personal liberty.  I don’t really think that is true and I have a hard time believing he did that to satisfy his political base.  So the question at the end of the day is why did he do it anyway?

It confounds me because just as there will not be much of a political cost to the decision to end the long-form census, what is the political upside?  I don’t see a thing.  It’s like the Prime Minister has taken a cup of water out of the Sydenham River and at the end of the day, what difference does it make?   None.  The question is, why make that decision when all you’re going to get is criticized?

I don’t know the answer to that question but what I do question is why the Prime Minister and the Conservative party sometimes step out in front of the bus and make unnecessary, almost bizarre decisions they don’t need to.  The long form census decision is one there have been others.   Sometimes I think the Conservatives are so bored with Michael Ignatieff and his Liberals, they have meetings to decide who’s going to throw the pop bottle through the greenhouse.

I don’t know Stephen Harper, although I did have an opportunity to chat with him once for almost half an hour.  I consider him to be a very smart guy and a politician who has learned much about his game, mostly from the great Liberal political master, Jean Chretien.  He operates in a political environment where it is almost impossible to garner a majority government but is also almost impossible for him to lose his own government.  So politically he acts like a master of what he wants to do, and then suddenly we get somebody throwing paint against a white piano in the form of the voluntary long form census.  What’s the upside to that?

Prime Minister Harper and his cabinet members would surely have their reasons.  The long form census decision is one thing but in my opinion if these things continue, eventually it’s going to catch up with them.  You might remember the 2004 election campaign.  Opposition leader Stephen Harper was doing pretty well in the race against Paul Martin.  Then, for whatever reason opposition leader Stephen Harper said on national TV that Prime Minister Paul Martin was soft on child pornography!  You could almost hear the air leaving the Conservative’s election balloon.  Is one of the most bizarre things I had ever heard a Canadian politician accusing a sitting Prime Minister of.

The census form is not in the same league as that.  However to me there is a consistent pattern.  One of these days if it continues Stephen Harper and his Conservatives will go too far and makes some unexpected bizarre statement or policy change burying them when all they had to do was remain silent.  The clock is ticking.  Michael Ignatieff, all you have to do is wait.

I bring this up today because some of you faithful readers are thinking about using chocolate to that ultimate end and there is somebody in Britain by the name of “chocolate finger” who is thinking of making that a lot more expensive.  Still don’t get it?  It just so happens that last week the fund manager for Amagario, a hedge fund which buys chocolate for a large Swiss manufacturer purchased 240,000 tonnes of cocoa beans and actually took delivery against the July cocoa contract.    Cocoa prices spiked on the news and then retreated later after it became known that a hedge fund manager bought the cocoa beans.  Needless to say, “chocolate finger” is actually taking delivery of the cocoa beans, which represent about 7% of annual global production.  That’s enough cocoa beans to produce 5.3 billion quarter pound chocolate bars.  I just hope he has a wife and she enjoys chocolate.

For some of you this must seem mundane.  I know myself I rarely eat chocolate and chocolate bars aren’t part of my life.  However, I have known quite a few females in my life who love that late-night run for a chocolate bar.  You would think after all that time that I might get the connection.  I digress.  It would seem that the hedge fund manager, Anthony Ward dubbed the “chocolate finger” is making an attempt to corner the cocoa market.  By taking delivery of all those cocoa beans, he’ll be able to exert market pressure and make some money on the anticipation of rising cocoa prices.  I’m sure that still doesn’t get any of you shaking in your boots, when considering buying that proverbial chocolate treat.

It just so happens that I picked up on this when I watched CNBC’s “Power Lunch” program last Monday.  A friend of mine, Darin Newsom is a senior grain analyst with Telvent DTN and is often asked to appear on the big American business channels like CNBC. It just so happens that he tweets about this before it happens and I often catch his analysis on CNBC.  So when I rolled through the digital images on my DVR, I caught Darin’s interview and to my surprise he was asked about cocoa and wheat.  What followed was a two-way back-and-forth on the intricacies of the cocoa market and what in the world “chocolate finger” was doing.  The CNBC commentators were obviously enthralled with this offbeat, delicious topic.

From my perspective what Darin said about wheat was far more interesting.  Needless to say when you compare wheat against chocolate, or do you think wins out?  Bad weather in Europe, Russia and Kazakhstan plus speculative money coming into the wheat market aren’t very sexy.  However, what Darren intimated to me later was that both markets were broken and not necessarily working as you might expect.

That made me wonder what a “broken market” was?   I think from a purely analytical view it means that there are big differences between futures values in the commodity markets and their cash equivalents at the time of delivery.  In other words futures values may not have any relation to cash prices and or specific market players might be trying to impinge an unusual pressure on the market by cornering its supply, like “chocolate finger”.    The wheat and cocoa market may be candidates for that.

My own experience with “broken markets” usually has to do with very unusual price movements.  For instance in 1991 I was called to testify before the House of Commons standing committee on agriculture regarding an Italian company, Feruzzi which was forced to liquidate its holdings in the soybean market.  At the time this caused a tremendous decrease in the price of soybeans.  I also had an experience in Australia in another life where a friend of mine was working on a problem in a specific sheep market where prices just weren’t adding up.

My friend was a classmate who was working as an agricultural economist in Australia.  He told me this one particular sheep market generated prices that didn’t make any sense.  So I asked him the standard questions about volume of sheep, frequency of delivery and a host of other questions that should have added up to a problem.  However, I left Australia before he knew the answer, I just knew that that particular market was broken and wasn’t working.

It is a rare event, but broken markets do happen and usually they happen with great fanfare.  Free markets are great things but with the right set of circumstances they can be broken and abused.  So watch those chocolate prices over the next few weeks.  And if you have to make one of those late-night chocolate runs, be prepared to pay the price, whatever that may be.

For those of you who don’t know, Lebron James is a 6′8″ professional basketball player who grew up in Akron Ohio and was drafted by the hometown Cleveland Cavaliers in 2003.  He was drafted 1st, right out of high school and it just so happened his hometown team was lucky enough to get him.  His basketball skills are a combination of power, strength and speed that is unmatched in NBA history.  I really like Lebron James as a player.  In my mind he has a special combination of skills that make him a great, great player.

He has never won a championship even though he has led Cleveland to some very good regular-season records over the last three years.  Local Piston fans will remember that he literally pushed the Pistons out the back door three years ago by scoring 29 out of the last 30 points Cleveland scored in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference final.  So when he went into free agency after last season, the hype was unprecedented.

All the major American news media centers were focused on what Lebron thinks, feels, what his friends feel, what his grandmother said, and all the different cars that were going into his driveway.  It was bizarre at best as this rich American athlete could command such attention from the American media.  The Canadian media was the same way, albeit if he had been a hockey star it probably would have been worse.  At the end of the day he even put together an hour-long special on ESPN, the American sports network to let the world know his decision.  Yes, I tuned in and after about 45 minutes of talking about Lebron James, he was finally asked where he was going and he said Miami.  That was the team that already had two special basketball megastars on it with the names of Dwayne Wade and a personal favorite of mine former Raptors Chris Bosh.

It was pretty shocking from a basketball perspective as all three stars took $15 million less to play together under the NBA salary cap rules.  It certainly will be a compelling story next year when the NBA opens the season.  Needless to say, it will be different for me because I think that whole “Lebron episode” has cheapened the sport and made many of us think what’s up with all this?  What has our society transformed into to put so much credence on what a star athlete twitches about when the world has so many more acute needs?

When Lebron James left Cleveland Cavaliers according to Forbes magazine their value decreased by about $100 million and the Miami franchise value increased by $40 million.  The average price of a basketball season ticket in Miami increased to $8250 from $3239 according to a popular website which monitors ticket prices.  So despite how repugnant you might have found this Lebron spectacle, they were big dollars involved and lots of jobs on the line.

The NBA certainly has some thinking to do regarding so much talent ending up on one team.  It has to do with the NBA’s soft salary cap but in this case it also has to do with the three players wanting to play together.  As a fan I think it really cheapens the league, because why buy a ticket in Toronto, Cleveland or even Detroit next year.  It seems like a foregone conclusion who is going to reach the NBA finals.  Spreading a little parity or mandating a little parity over this league needs to be done.

Having said all this who am I to judge the world and collectively how we judge our sports heroes.  For instance we shower them with so much money and they are so privileged while the vast majority of people in this world don’t have enough for their basic needs.  For instance last week in South Africa, Spain beat the Netherlands for the World Cup.  It didn’t matter where you were in this world outside of North America, that World Cup is all that mattered.

So it is, what it is.  I will tune in next fall when there is frost on the pumpkin to see Lebron play.  I even might enjoy it.  However, the spectacle of a rich American basketball player holding the world’s attention at ransom over the last few weeks changed my sports paradigm.  I’m not as interested anymore.  For Lebron and everybody else out there in professional sports, that might be something to worry about.

I’ve never bought into the Canadian dollar going to $1.15 US.  However, I told audiences last winter that there was no compelling argument for the Canadian dollar to go down.  It seemed to me with the Canadian economy booming compared to our American cousins, there didn’t seem to be much of a limit on the Canadian dollar.  I even made the argument that if the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates faster than the Bank of Canada we would see the loonie go down.  That didn’t happen but the loonie went down anyway.  It just goes to show you that I’m just as bad as the rest of them.

Still, talking about our economy is addictive to many people.  Or, maybe I should say that most males in our society are at least a bit hardwired that way.  It has always been my greatest challenge to build my female audience but after a 25 year career I’m still looking for that silver bullet.  Maybe it is that the females in our society believe nobody knows about the economy with any certainty, so they concentrate on the really important things in life like relationships.  I dunno, however I soldier on.

The problem is when I talk about relationships between interest rates and currency values that doesn’t have the same type of resonance as Ann of Green Gables.  I will never forget my time in Cavendish Prince Edward Island at the home of Anne of Green Gables.  The home is a lovely place in a fabulous part of the country full of things all about Anne.  Surrounding the house are people taking pictures of the house.  Then there was me wondering what all the fuss was about.  I still don’t get it.

If there are any female readers left, forgive me.  I know a tour of the Bank of Canada would not be as much fun for you, but I would love to sit down with the Bank of Canada Gov. and pick his brain.  I would just ask that you bear with me when I’m talking about all the wonderful relationships between currencies, interest rates, fiscal policy and central banks.

In many ways they are the nuts and bolts underneath our economy that churn and clank to make our economy work.  So when I see that some Canadian economic thinkers are now saying the Canadian dollar will go down to $.90 US, it makes me pause.  At the same time some Canadian economic thinkers are saying that we are going to avoid a double dip recession.   I find it my job to try to understand why and to add to the cacophony.  In southwestern Ontario where jobs are hard to come by and the recession has hit hard I’m hoping that whatever happens brings much economic growth back to this region.

From a Canadian perspective much of our navel gazing is always toward the south, especially during the July 4th weekend.  Ditto for most if not all of our economic growth potential lies to the south. So from my perspective I think it will be key to see future US federal reserve interest rate moves to gauge how the American economy will proceed.  Critical to Southwestern Ontario economic direction will be renewed economic growth in the American heartland.  However, increasingly much of our economic interdependence with each other is affected by outside markets overseas and elsewhere.  Who would’ve ever thought a few years ago the sovereign debt problems of an ancient country like Greece would affect jobs in a place like Southwestern Ontario.

Despite those problems, there is much we could do to help ourselves and that’s where Ann of Green Gables comes in.  If you have ever been to Prince Edward Island “Anne” is on everything.  They have “Anne” cups, “Anne” license plates, “Anne” soft drinks, and probably “Anne” toothpicks.  This week they even have the very popular American talk show, “Regis and Kelly” coming to Prince Edward Island.  They are marketing geniuses because in my mind who is “Anne”?  Millions of dollars of Prince Edward Island income depend on “Anne”.  They are to be commended for that.

So what’s ahead?  While I was writing this one of the most respected market analysts I know, tweeted that the loonie was headed to $.88 US.  However, I just wonder what “Anne” thinks.  In our current place, she is as good as anybody.