World News

For now, the economy is very, very bad. Canadian and U.S.stocks are falling to 12 year lows. Some are comparing the current recession to the Great Depression during the 1930’s. Bob Wong, vice-president for MF Global Canada says that the problems now and then are partially caused by too much borrowing. Both consumers and business have borrowed too much money that they cannot pay back to the banks, because the economy is in freefall. Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, states that AIG, the insurance company, is the reason why our financial markets are in such a mess and should take a lot of the blame. So far AIG has received approximately 160 billion dollars from the U.S. government and still needs about 30 billion dollars more to fund for the losses created by its poor investments. 

Last week, Barack Obama held a joint session of Congress to discuss the ailing economy. He announced that he would prefer to sign a stimulus bill that doesn’t have earmarks. Earmarks are special pet projects that waste taxpayers’ money and benefit only local politicians and not the whole country. However, he signed the bill, with almost 9000 earmarks included! many people are upset about the stimulus bill because the U.S. government has to borrow a lot of money. Do you think that Mr. Obama should have signed the bill? Put your thoughts in the box below.