To the Editor:
(Re: This is the Life: “Joining forces not good for all”)
I wish to commend Lorne Eckersley on his recent column regarding the financial woes in Spain and Greece.
His analysis is insightful, clear and, for an employee of the popular press, courageous. I would challenge you to find the described problems in the European Common Market so clearly elucidated in the Vancouver Sun or the Toronto Sun, whose reporters seem to rarely get beyond printing the press releases of the corporate elite or their cohorts among the elected governments.
The eulogization of austerity, interpreted as the elimination of the few remaining government services, barring the military, as a solution to the self-inflicted economic woes rampant in the global economy should be transparent to all except the most naive and uninformed. That reducing employment and concomitantly purchasing power is going to improve the economy is ridiculous in the extreme.
It also follows that the endless pursuit of free trade by our own government is playing into the same hands as those being dealt out in the ECM presently.
Is it not time to recognize that our country should recognize we still have a few resources left that could be managed by our own country and used to provide some benefit to our own populace, rather than pipelining them out of the country and into the pockets of the one per cent?
Bob Ewashen
Creston