Canada’s Finance Minister Brags About Rate Cuts While Citizens Suffer

In a stunning show of arrogance, Canada’s Minister of Finance took to X/Twitter to gloat about being the first G7 country to begin cutting interest rates. Chrystia Freeland declared victory over national economic hardship by noting that the country’s central bank led the entire developed world with lower rates, displaying a flabbergasting combination of economic illiteracy and mind-boggling hubris. 

When it comes to the question of whether these pseudo-academic politicos are dishonest, dumb, or both, the most likely answer is a combination of the two, with an extreme dash of pretentious smuggery to make their statements that much more infuriating.

Predictably, some responders praised their dear leaders for saving them, not realizing their so-called “saviors” are also the source of the actual problem. By and large, however, X users savaged Freeland in the replies of her tweet, which blithely declared:

“Good news for Canadians: the Bank of Canada is cutting interest rates again. We were the first G7 country to cut rates in June and July and now the first to cut rates for a third time. This is welcome relief for so many Canadians and shows that our economic plan is working.”

Savvy, skeptical responders pointed out that the Bank of Canada makes decisions independent of the Department of Finance, and by conflating the two, Freeland is trying to include herself in the decision to take credit for her party. Maybe that’s because so many Canadians are in dire economic pain that confidence is collapsing in Trudeau’s liberals, and she’s becoming desperate to curry favor.

More importantly, however, others observed that rate cuts don’t “show” anything, much less the success of an economic plan. They’re merely policy decisions made by disconnected, self-interested bureaucrats to reverse the problems created by their previous policy decisions, locking countries into neverending engineered boom-bust cycles. 

In other words, cutting rates is the only way to artificially delay a devastating collapse caused by, among other things, out of control spending and debt, and an economy that’s totally dependent on having a central bank force low interest rates upon the economy to prevent it from imploding.

My god, how can someone so financially illiterate be in charge of our country’s finances?

The rates are being cut because our economy is in the toilet and the BOC doesn’t have confidence in the @liberal_party government to fix it.#LiberalFools #cdnpoli #ElectionNow

— Jon Fraser (@JonFraserTF) September 4, 2024

Meanwhile, Canada’s economy has contracted in real terms in the past several years, with only a population increase to help cover it up. The fact about “official” recessions is that bureaucrats, academics, and politicians wait for certain data points to manifest before they declare one, and will use the rosiest data they possibly can get away with. Meanwhile, real citizens already know the economy is in the dumps because they can’t afford basic goods, or find the jobs they need to feed their families and keep up with their bills.

With 2022 and 2023’s inflation higher than what Canadians had seen in decades, more rate cuts will only push prices up further across the entire economy. But like the Federal Reserve in the US, keeping rates higher for too much longer will tank the system. Letting inflation rip is their only choice to save the rate-dependent sectors from leading to a systemic crisis.

Canada Official CPI 5-Year

Absurdly, interest rates in Canada are still vastly higher than they were in 2022, when inflation was really raging out of control — in a free market, they’d be higher, but central banks only know how to react moment-to-moment, just waiting for the next set of “official” data to come out as economies teeter on the brink.

Canada Interest Rates, 2022-Present

As Freeland gloats about Canada leading the charge to bring interest rates down, she’s really bragging about the central bank’s folly of cutting them too much too quickly. This will cause the semi-dormant inflationary can of worms to rip open yet again, further tanking the purchasing power of already-struggling Canadians. But given the choice of crashing the economy with high interest rates or high inflation, central banks tend to kick the can down the road by saving their pals in the banking system, and choose inflation instead — no matter the pain it causes ordinary citizens. 

Whichever path they choose, destruction is always the result…and commoners in the lower and middle classes are the ones bound to feel the most pain.