Prorogue or Perogie?

I swear, if I hear one more sour cream joke, I'll get the tub out of the fridge and dump it on someone's head (possibly last night's exam invigilator. And no, I'm not eating your Hershey's Kiss. My mom told me to not take candy from strangers).

I've been very distracted, this past week, by the sound of Newsworld in the background as I've been trying to study (I finally gave up and shut it off. After the Governor General's decision).

I have a few things to say:

Mr. Harper: You are a bully. Stop it, or I will take your toys away from you and send you home. Don't make me speak to your wife.

Liberal Party of Canada: Either get behind your leader, Mr. Dion, or dump him. You pick.

Mr. Layton: This is as close as you and your party are going to get to having a real voice in Parliament. Don't screw it up.

Mr. Duceppe: Can I move to Quebec? How's the farming out there? I'd like to bring my family with me. All 10 of them.

Ms. Jean: I don't envy you. I don't think you made the right decision, but you made a careful decision.

I am quite disgusted with all of the parties right now. I usually like minority governments. I certainly didn't like the last one. This one's not shaping up much better.

I'm not as freaked out about the economy as others are. Mostly because I think it's a long overdue correction. I'm sitting pretty, in a house that I bought at a reasonable price and I go every day to a job that compensates me well and isn't disappearing anytime soon. And if it does disappear, I'm in the right industry - accountants are always in demand. We deliver bad news, and we are good at it. Furthermore, I'm not planning on retiring for another 30 years, so I'm not worried about the hit I've taken on my investment portfolio.

But that doesn't mean that I'm not worried about my fellow Canadians. The ones who are working in manufacturing and forestry, and don't have the skills to move into other industries. The ones who hoped to retire, and just watched the retirement kitty tank. The ones who just got a good job, and might lose it now, because we are all freaking out.

To all of us: Please, stop freaking out! Let's take every day as it comes (I'm looking at you, market investors) and not have an extreme reaction every time it looks like a financial forecast or 3rd quarter results might not be as rosy as you predicted.

You know, we brought this on ourselves. We got used to high returns, so traders bought and sold, to inflate the commissions and make it look like there was exceptional portfolio growth. And executives responded, by devising new instruments to finance investment that wasn't needed, except to satisfy market expectations.

Who is the market? I am. You are. The $50 or $100 every payday that is sent into a mutual fund. The 4% of your gross salary contributed to your pension (did you know that the biggest investor in Canada is the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan?). We are the investors demanding the increased returns and inflated stock prices. We brought this on ourselves. And those companies delivered. They manufactured cheap, inferior consumer products that we bought. On credit. Because we wanted nice shiny things. Just to have.

It's time to pay the piper, and I don't think anyone has figured out that we are in the band.