The awareness of the danger is only now totally apparent. Too much debt out there in Canada to raise interest rates . They were employed as a stimulous originally. Yet governments got too comforatable with them. So did the population.

The bottom is falling out of the Canadian dollar but interest rates cannot be increased to drive it back up. If it became an absolute requirement to do so would also be a real disaster internally. Debt defaults would be horrendous.

The low dollar is making all imports like fruit and vegatables inflationary. Increasing very, very rapidly.. Canada foolishly like a lot of countries thought the higher oil prices were permanent.

Either the world decides to restore some sanity to the oil prices or many countries if not all developed ones will. . At this time the specter of extreme economic danger is there. It is so obvious that the money pumping will accelerate again.

Any developed country that thinks they will avoid the overall fallout is probably delusional. Anyone with a brain should know that you do not construct an energy based economy in developed countries and meddle to this extent once it is established.

As I told my son in law when he was happy to see the declining price of oil initially. This in the longer haul may be the most expensive cheap gas you will ever see.

I suspect this low oil pricing situation is being responded to by the overall stock markets starting now. That oil prices were intentionally manipulated lower as an economic bridge may have not been a bad ideal.

There may not have been an awareness that if it got out of hand there was a cliff at the other side of the bridge. Canada has pretty much lost the levers to control inflation. Plus control the value of the Canadian dollar.

Our consumption of American products is going to also fall seriously. We do no longer have a strong enough industrial base left to generate enough high export sales levels because of our low dollar to compensate for no oil revenue.

We are also sitting on an insane real estate bubble at the same time in Canada. Especially if you factor it all in.

Hopefully if it was purposely artificially manipulated downward oil may be simularily manipulated upward. If it got out of control or the original upward price manipulation was based on lies over the years there are going to be very serious problems.

This is not meant to be alarmist. The sky is not falling yet at the same time it is getting cloudy.

Just a feeling of possible realities by me. Canada is in no shape to deal with really low oil prices over the longer term. Other than make it very punishing for a large segment of the population.

Exports are also falling as some countries are already trying to compensate for their lost oil revenue. Either by purchasing less or starting to improve the export of other commodities they have had but never exploited before. This new competition driving commodity prices lower.

I told you on forum that this was one of your country's biggest problems a few months ago. Canada is a commodity-based economy.

Of course and you are right Joe. Sad we lost the bulk of what industrial base had in the 1980s in Canada. General Motors is now leaving it looks like as well. Not official but they did not state they were staying either when asked last week. Our minister of industry had a meeting with them over the persistent rumors.