The need to rebalance

Nor do ideas, policy or long-term vision seem to count. How else could a reality-TV star and billionaire with a shoddy record of doing business be up against one of the most unpopular public figures ever to seek the U.S. presidency?

In the U.K., a referendum that former prime minister David Cameron granted to appease a vocal and annoying rump of his caucus has put the world’s fifth-largest economy on a formal course out of the European Union and into a future of economic uncertainty that neither side of that vote had prepared for.

In continental Europe, we are witnessing a return of the type of extremist populism that was common in the 1920s and ’30s.

After almost 70 years of trade treaties under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and its successor, the World Trade Organization, the G20 decided it needed to remind us all that unfettered trade between nations is preferable by far to the irrational protectionism that has caused wars and economic stagnation in the past.

Here in Canada, we may still be basking in the sunny ways of our new Liberal federal government. But our prime natural resources are in danger of remaining landlocked from the rest of the world because, in the current political climate, government approval for any kind of pipeline is virtually impossible.

That a small group of Quebec protesters was able to force the National Energy Board (NEB) to cancel its hearings into the Energy East Pipeline in August should remind us that Canada is not immune to what is going on elsewhere.

And three members of the NEB had to recuse themselves because they were stupid enough to meet with a lobbyist for TC Pipelines LP before the hearings started. No minutes were kept of this meeting and the NEB initially denied it happened before owning up to it.

Ham-fistedness like this probably added a year or two to the approval process for Energy East. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may not be directly responsible for this kind of carelessness – this time. But if he tolerates it, he will be in the future.

The developed world is in a crisis of confidence, just as between the two world wars. And the carelessness of the ruling classes is to blame.

The recession of 2008-09 was caused by reckless behaviour on Wall Street. Yet, no one has ever been legally punished for a calamity that affected the lives of millions.

In the U.S. and the U.K., no one in the cognoscenti has been thinking much about how those in Appalachia or the north of England have been left out of the benefits of globalization and expanded world trade.

In the U.S., malfeasance by public officials has become common enough, at all levels of government, to warrant the label of the Indicted States of America.

No wonder there are so many angry voters out there. No wonder there are politicians trying to exploit that anger.

Demagogues, or even sincere politicians trying to appease enraged voters, are not good for policy-making.

High-profile French economist Thomas Piketty recently warned that, with so many people on the wrong side of the great imbalance, accumulation of wealth will continue to outstrip economic growth and, therefore, continue to affect the common good.

There was a similar warning 500 years ago. Niccolò Machiavelli famously wrote that the wise prince doesn’t flout the law because the law matters to the citizens; rather, a prince who flouts the law could become a former prince.

Bad behaviour and carelessness in high places are, of course, nothing new. But in today’s age of mandated transparency and accountability, good behaviour and diligence have become essential for a healthy democracy and economic growth.

It’s time the ruling classes became more sensitive to what goes on beneath them – not only for the common good, but also their own.

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