Monk

Guess which country, alone in the industrialized world, has not faced a single bank failure, calls for bailouts or government intervention in the financial or mortgage sectors. Yup, it's Canada. In 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada's banking system the healthiest in the world. America's ranked 40th, Britain's 44th.

Canada has done more than survive this financial crisis. The country is positively thriving in it. Canadian banks are well capitalized and poised to take advantage of opportunities that American and European banks cannot seize. The Toronto Dominion Bank, for example, was the 15th-largest bank in North America one year ago. Now it is the fifth-largest. It hasn't grown in size; the others have all shrunk.

So what accounts for the genius of the Canadians? Common sense. Over the past 15 years, as the United States and Europe loosened regulations on their financial industries, the Canadians refused to follow suit, seeing the old rules as useful shock absorbers. Canadian banks are typically leveraged at 18 to 1—compared with U.S. banks at 26 to 1 and European banks at a frightening 61 to 1. Partly this reflects Canada's more risk-averse business culture, but it is also a product of old-fashioned rules on banking.

-- Fareed Zakaria for Newsweek

Now that hurts. I suppose that pretty soon Canada may see all of us as just sort of one big Mexico. Now if only I could marry a Canadian; I could have both health care and a functioning economy.

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This is the first time that I've heard Canada called Snow Mexico. Cute. Bleh, so long as you are white and middle-class, it's all good.

( more Canada humor )

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Canadians are one-upping us again on multi-culturalism. They are airing a new show that apparently makes a combination of "All in the Family" and "Beverly Hillbillies" out of the experience of Muslims living in Western society titled "Little Mosque on the Prarie."

As I was reading about it, I was thinking they might be in for some serious confrontation from fundamentalist Muslims, and the article addresses that issue, and one hopes they are right that our concerns are misplaced, though our concerns are certainly not irrational given recent history.

( article )

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Ice is melting so fast in the Arctic that the North Pole will be in the open sea in 30 years, according to a team of leading climatologists.

... Researchers assessing the impact of carbon emissions on the world’s climate have calculated that late summer in the Arctic will be ice-free by 2040 or earlier - well within a lifetime.

-- Lewis Smith for The Times

That ought to make Canadians happy. Imagine, Canada to become the world's prime real estate. The rest of us will be drowning under water, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

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