Oh, Canada

At school, American friends made a hobby of slagging Canada.  Pretty standard.  "Canadians are too polite", "Canadians are boring".  Luckily, "The Man Everyone Loved to Hate" was President of the U.S. at the time and the conversations were short.  We've all heard the swipes, some in Canada would agree with them, very politely and boring-ly, though despite our unflappable humility, we do love to have our skirts fanned from time to time.  

Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International is apparently taking a serious run at a Governor General's Award this year, despite the fact he's American.  Last week he published a column in Newsweek applauding Canada's virtues.  Mr. Zakaria writes in his article "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative", Canadians should be proud of the "common sense" and the capitalization rates of our banking system, which is getting recognition the world over.  Not exactly riveting stuff, but Switzerland must be hating us.

Canada is the only country in the industrialized world that has not faced a bank failure or calls for bailouts and government intervention.  The reason for this is our conservative, staid, risk-averse attitudes, the fodder of a-many jabs.  Our banks have been regulated to have far higher capitalization rates than the rest of the world.  Typically, our banks are leveraged 18 to 1 ($18 of debt for every $1 in the savings account), whereas the Americans are generally 26 to 1 and the European banks are a staggering 61 to 1.  Ooh la la.  Needless to say, this functions as a lot of profit in boom times, and, when the boom turns to bust the bank goes bursting and a Frenchman has one less half-caf, triple, Grande, three pumps sugar-free-vanilla, soy, no foam, 180 degree cappucino. 

Apparently, TD is brimming with pride these days.  They have gone from the backbenches of North American corporate obscurity, having been the 15th largest bank in N.A., to a major player, becoming North Americas 5th largest bank.

Mr. Zakari goes on to sing the praises of our 'responsible' natures when it comes to our fiscal policy.  We have been very good beavers and have stored up a lot of nuts through fiscal surpluses over the past decade to deal with the current financial crisis with a stable and sober approach. The Harvard PhD also likes our immigration program, our accountable mortgage policies, and our healthy life-expectancies.  Stop it, I'm blushing.

After having read this, I looked again at the the first line of the article.  It reads, "The legendary editor of The New Republic, Michael Kinsley, once held a "Boring Headline Contest" and decided that the winner was "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative".  This, for me, encapsulated much of the torn pride I felt throughout the article.  Though disguised as complements, we Canadians, can never escape the love affair foreigners have with taking a few jabs at our responsible, risk averse, common sensical, conservative selves.  Characteristics of good bankers it seems.