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I have the shivers when I hear our business gurus saying that we need a strong Canadian dollar without explaining the reasons for the good of the country. I just came across an economic paper which reiterates the position of economist Dean Baker maintaining that the devaluation of the U.S. dollar would be in the best interest of our global economy.

Since most of Canadian business gurus are preaching the gospel for both a high Canadian dollar and a later U.S. dollarization of our economy, I invite all of these gurus to read the paper "The Dollar and the US Economy" by Fred Bergsten of the Institute for International Economics.

My question to our Canadian business gurus is this: what would be the consequences of having a strong Canadian dollar with respect to the US dollar if this same US dollar is presently overvalued by some 40 percent with respect to most other currencies? And we must understand that this question is not even a matter of pure economic science, if it exists, as it is a matter of cultural and social understanding.

Our world is complicated and we find our own solutions not by hiring our experts but mostly by having a participatory social and economic system. We understand that the economic policies and the dollar policies of the United States are flawed; therefore, I find the current Canadian discourse advertised by our concentrated media to catch up with the US economic policies very irritating.

References

THE NEW ECONOMY GOES BUST: WHAT THE RECORD SHOWS By Dean Baker, October 29, 2001 http://www.cepr.net/new_economy_goes_bust.htm

THE DOLLAR AND THE US ECONOMY By C. Fred Bergsten, Director Institute for International Economics. Speech delivered at the Business Round Table on 21 February 2002. This was also his testimony to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs on 24 October 2001 http://www.iie.com/papers/bergsten0202-2.htm