HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2002-02-20, Page 5Final Thought
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2002. PAGE 5.
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No more running with the bulls
/
don't remember much about World War II,
but I do recall seeing a famous recruitment
poster designed to shame backsliders,
pacifists, and other dedicated non-combatants
into signing up for active duty. It showed a
middle-aged man with a toddler on his krfee
who was looking up and asking "What did you
do in the war, Daddy?"
I never had to worry about being shamed by
that poster because I never had a war. I was
born during the wind-down of World War II; I
was a pimply adolescent at the outbreak of the
Korean conflict and I was too long in the tooth
by the time Canuck peacekeeping duties in
Cyprus, Gaza, Somalia, Bosnia and Croatia
came along.
So, no war stories. But if I had to, I could
always impress an inquisitive tot with "Well,
sonny...I ran with the bulls. Twice."
It's true. 'Way back when I was young
and none too bright I spent a couple of years
in Spain. One July day, I found myself
in the town of Pamplona where natives
practise a centuries-old custom called 'el
encierro'.
I'd heard of el encierro, vaguely. I knew that,
once a year, Pamplonians celebrated La Fiesta
de San Fermines - a six-day festival which
included daily bullfights. .
And I knew that as part of the celebrations
people jumped in front of the fighting bulls and
ran with them to the bullring.
Seemed like a good idea at the time.
Well, I said I was young and none too bright:
And so I found myself, one morning at dawn,
groggy with rioja and standing in a plaza with
.a number of young, agitated and none-too-
bright-looking people like myself.
i
'm sure that most of us have known some
individual or some company that has had to
declare bankruptcy and watched the assets
being disposed of so that the creditors could
get a part but not all of their money back.
It is not very often that we have an example
of a country going down the tube in similar
fashion but 2002 has provided us with just such
a situation.
The country in question is not some Third
World country that hardly knows what an
economic policy is let alone how to run one.
The culprit is Argentina, one of the wealthiest
nations in South America and one which. most
economists agree, should have known better.
But, when faced with a debt equal to well-
over $200 billion Canadian, the government
decided it could not even service this debt, i.e.
pay the interest on it, thus publicly defaulted
on the whole amount.
No matter what kind of expressions are used
by politicians to describe the situation, this is
bankruptcy pure and simple. The question
which follows is how a country could let itself
get in such a position. This is a good question
since a parallel is to be found in Canada. The
two countries followed the same path, the
difference being that the Argentinians let the
matter get out of control; the Canadians did
not.
The slippery path is that of deficit financing,
the act of a government spending more money
than it receives in taxes. The difference has to
be borrowed and, if the domestic market is too
small to handle all the borrowing, • the
remainder has to come from abroad.
Canada started on this path back in the times
of Pierre Elliot Trudeau who was a• very
intelligent person, but never seemed to get a
handle on economics. The prime ministers who
Arthur
Black
A distant cannon sounded. The people
around me leapt up like shotgunned hares and
began streaking towards the only opening in
the plaza. I decided to follow them.
The cannonade meant that the bulls had
been released and were on their way to the
bullring. They would follow a twisting
lane through the streets of Pamplona on
which all the sidestreets had been barricaded
off. The only thing between the bulls and the
bullring was.I.well, me, actually. Me and the
rest of the motley crew that was loping
erratically towards the relative safety of the
bullring.
One thing I didn't understand about the
running of the bulls was...how fast they can
run. Spanish fighting bulls are not the lethargic
slabs of beef you see standing like monoliths in
Canadian pastures. They're more like giant
cats. In his book Death In The Afternoon,
Hemingway claims that, in a 30-yard dash,
fighting bulls can outrun a horse.
' I was loping towards the bullring in an easy
jog when I noticed that (a) people were
beginning to *pass me and (b) as they looked
back, their focus was getting shorter. More
than slightly winded, I glanced back over my'
own shoulder.
And saw a gutter-to-gutter wall of very sharp
horns coming toward me.
Raymond
Canon
The
International
Scene
followed him were equally seduced by the
short-term benefits of such financing and, in
order to give Canadians what they said they
wanted, more and more borrowing led to
higher and higher debt until we were using
about one-third of our federal budget just to
pay the interest on this debt.
Canada is a richer nation than Argentina and
also a smarter one for the true dangers of
deficit financing were , seen in time,
expenditures were cut back at both the federal
and provincial level (thanks to Harris and
Chretien) and, while we still have a large
unpaid debt, it is being reduced as a percentage
of our national spending.
The Argentinians got no such leadership and
they are now paying the price.
What made the South American situation
even worse was the high level of corruption in
Argentina. Too much money was being
siphoned off for people or organizations who
believed they were above the law.
This went on year after year and you have a
shining example of the old saying that the
richer get richer (much of it unethically) and
the poor get poorer. Add to that the cost of the
ill-fated invasion of the Falkland Islands and
you have an explosive mixture for disaster.
One Argentinian government tried to restore
a semblance of stability by attaching their
currency, the peso, to the American dollar. It
I immediately hit warp speed, but knew I
couldn't keep it up for long. I decided to climb
over one of the barricades along the side. The
barricades were manned by members of the
Guardia Civil - Spanish cops in those funny
three-cornered patent leather hats. A chap
running ahead of me had come to the same
conclusion I had and leapt on the barricade
placing his hands on the top in order tow vault
over.
The Guardia Civil looking over the barricade
used his police baton to play a brief Gene
Krupa solo on the, guy's knuckles. The man
dropped back into the race.
When I could literally hear the bulls huffing
and gallumphing behind me, I panicked,
veered to my right and slammed my body into
a stone wall, hiding behind a drainpipe.
Hey - when you're scared, you'd be amazed
how thin you can make yourself.
All in all, it was a pretty humiliating
experience. I returned to Pamplona the next
year, rested, fit, abstaining from rioja and
determined to salvage my honour.
When the cannon fired I Was off like
Donovan Bailey. I led the pack.
Then I left the pack behind me. I got to the
bull ring in such short time that the crowd
waiting there whistled at my appearance,
amazed .that a mere turista could cover the
ground that fast.
I thought.
Turned out that in Spain, whistles are a sign
of derision. The Spanish crowd was
acknowledging my ....cowardice.
So, knowing what I know now, would I ever
consider running with the bulls one last time?
Actually, I think I'd rather fight a war.
was well intentioned -but badly thought out.
The American dollar started to appreciate
(Canadians know all about that) and this made
Argentinian exports more and more expensive
-and its existing debt harder to handle.
-If the country had been more disciplined in
its handling of the situation, it might have
pulled it off but in the end, this approach
became yet another albatross around its
economic neck.
In the end, economic mismanagement,
corruption and the unwillingness to take
adequate remedial measures did Argentina in.
As if the proverbial 'man on the street" were
not angry enough, the partial freezing of bank
accounts to prevent a massive outflow of
currency has made for an even more volatile
situation and who knows whether the country
can get its economy on the path to recovery
without further rioting._
With a suddenly devalued currency, over the
next few months Argentinians are going to find
rising prices as well as an income that fails to
keep pace; in short, yet another drop in their
standard of living.
Don't cry for me, Argentina. Cry foe
yourself!
Good sense is of all things in the world the
most equally distributed, for everybody
thinks ne is so well supplied with it, that
even those most difficult to please in all
other matters never desire more of i, than
they already possess.
— Rene Descartes
Truly champions
4 GTT That's wrong with being number
2?" blasted sociology' professor
Morrie Schwartz/ at a college
game, over the fans' chant of being numero
uno.
Tuesdays with Morrie is a biographical
account-of this amazing man's final months, as
told to his one-time student Mitch Albom. A
sports writer, Albom had gotten caught up in
the push and pull of society. Through his
mentor of 20 years before, he was once again
reminded of. the important things — love,
friendship and appreciation of the world around
us.
Morrie, who was dying of Amyotrophic
Lateral Sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's Disease,
remained philosophical about what was
happening. His body wasting away, he was
strengthened by a network of people who
adored him. Not power, not money, but love is
his legacy.
Being number one was not important to
Morrie; being the best one can be, was. There
is, he knew, more than one way to be a winner.
This past week Canadians Jamie Sale and
David Pelletier reminded everyone of that very
fact.
Unless you went back to sleep with Wiarton
Willie, you know the story. The Olympic pairs
skaters performed a perfeet long program, yet
finished behind the Russian duo, who were just
less than perfect, for the silver medal.
There was outrage, and while folks in Russia
were calling it Canadian sour grapes, that
outrage spread much farther. Robin Cousins, a
former Olympian, now figure skating analyst
for the BBC, was among those• saying
something was wrong. One-time U.S.
Olympian Peggy Fleming spoke of the travesty.
Panel discussions with experts touched on
corruption in the sport. They suggested a
change that would see professional judges
used, who would be accountable for their
decisions. The court of arbitration for sport, on
Friday, ordered the judges involved lin the Fet..
11 'contest to stay in Salt Lake City until the
appeals were over.
The publisher of the figure skating magazine
said the result "set the sport back 10 years."
Others involved in figure skating expressed
embarrassment over what happened.
Public outcry was so strong the International
Skating Union decided to launch an inquiry,
though as CBC commentator Brian Williams
pointed out this was a bit like "Enron doing an
internal audit". The International Olympic
Committee told the ISU to resolve this quickly
because the issue was taking attention away
from other sports. Then Friday morning, IOC
President Jacques Rogge announced that Sale
and Pelletier will also be awarded gold as the
French judge was found to be guilty of
misconduct.
And through it all, Sale and Pelletier
demonstrated a grace that surpasses that which
they showed on ice. They had accepted the
silver medal with dignity and stressed, that for
them, simply having done the job they set out to
do in Salt Lake City brought tremendous
satisfaction. While others have fumed, albeit
rightly so, the couple has displayed diplomacy
and class.
In doing so, they have brought something
much greater to this Olympics than the
competitive edge and much more admirable to
our country than a gold medal. A first-rate
effort should bring a first-place award. But as
Morrie said there is no shame in second,
especially when you accept it like a champion.
How a nation goes bankrupt