[saturnsc]

I think the current economic recovery, if that's what we are to be calling it is not addressing fundamental problems. Obama and Harper are going to take credit for "getting the economy back on track" when in fact there are important issues that are not being addressed. Interest rates are still extremely low. I may have missed it, but I haven't seen anything in the news about raising interest rates anytime soom. With interest rates as low as they are, monetary policy has almost no wiggling room left should the economy take another turn for the worse in the near future.

Problems not addressed include oil depletion and a much greater than emphasized switch to renewables. With Canadian and American governments doling out cash to banks and auto makers, shouldn't alternative energy be getting a sizable sum too? I realize that in order to avoid another Great Depression, the government had to bail out the larger banks, but the economy itself has to change too.

I think Obama's "cash for wrecks" programs was extremely premature. He set the limit for the subsidy of new cars' gas mileage far too low and began this program at a time when North American auto makers are not yet ready to roll out the cars efficient enough to get us around into the far future. Spending this amount of money on making homes more energy efficient would have produced greater energy reductions and environmental gains in the long term. We have enough technology already to make housing much more energy efficient, advancements that may still be years coming in terms of making transportation that much more efficient.

Investing in greening the economy would produce long-term jobs and would train and educate North Americans so that we would be able then to export our skills to the rest of the world. In terms of automotive efficiency, as an example, we have lots more catching up to do with Asia and Europe still than we have to do in terms of green housing and buildings.

The point is there are a lot of things that could be done, that are not currently being done, to make the world greener that would also bolster the economy. This is needed for the economy to be able to recover to the point where interest rates can be raised to a historically healthy level. Producing an economic recovery with interest rates this low and then declaring victory is nothing to be proud of.