A Tale Of Two Banks

When it comes to destructive American policies, the Federal Reserve is resisting — and Scotia Bank is openly collaborating.

The Trump régime wants control of America’s central bank and control of their interest rates, and he is willing to prosecute Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell to get it. Powell, unlike Scotia Bank CEO Scott Thomson, is willing to push back.

According to Powell, the Department of Justice served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over testimony to Congress last summer relating to the cost of building renovations. It is a fight obviously picked by the American dictator. Last summer, Trump and Powell publicly clashed over the matter in a manner that embarrassed Trump, something that he does not forgive.

The intimidation of the Federal Reserve by the White House is unprecedented and illegal, and on Sunday Powell released a brief video outlining both what happened and why. The video, less than two minutes in length, will quickly become an important part of the permanent historical record of this era.

Trump’s impact on the American economy has been dramatic, and he has put a lot of effort into hiding the damage of his policies for the average person.

When jobs numbers were not good, he fired Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) which gathers and publishes those numbers.

When the housing market softened as people had increasing trouble buying a home, his response was 50-year mortgages, locking people into debt for longer with vastly more interest over that time.

With Americans living paycheque-to-paycheque at higher rates than anywhere else in the developed world, his solution is to demand a credit card interest cap of 10%, proposed by many progressives over the years — but only for a year, causing them to have vastly higher interest payments on their additional borrowing once the freeze were to end.

None of those steps would be necessary if he had actually improved the economy in the way he either promised to or claims to have done, and so his next solution to hide the damage is to lower core lending rates. Unfortunately for him, like most central banks, the Federal Reserve operates at arms length and sets interest rates based on the empirical data Trump is suppressing.

The other bank of interest this week is Canada’s Scotia Bank. That Canadian institution’s CEO, Scott, Thomson is reported to have said:

With the Trump doctrine, the Monroe Doctrine of increasing emphasis in the Western Hemisphere, that’s good for growth. It’s a good thing for the U.S.; it’s a good thing for the Bank of Nova Scotia.

There is, of course, no indication that the Trump Doctrine is good for Canada in that sentence because, well, it isn’t. For the head of a major Canadian bank to so blatantly endorse the imperialist policies of Donald Trump is shocking and inexcusable.

For the leaders of powerful Canadian institutions to support an American doctrine based on the control or outright conquest of the entirety of the Americas, including a stated intention to annex Canada, is emphatically treasonous and should be treated as such.

The Criminal Code of Canada is not ambiguous on this point. Threaded excerpts:

High treason
46 (1) Every one commits high treason who, in Canada,
(b) levies war against Canada or does any act preparatory thereto; or

Punishment for high treason
47 (1) Every one who commits high treason is guilty of an indictable offence and shall be sentenced to imprisonment for life.

Institutionally endorsing the actions and policies of a foreign power that is actively and credibly threatening to annex our allies and our country is, prima facie, an act preparatory to war against Canada. That such an existential threat to our nation is analysed simply as good for the bank — read ‘profitable’ — is grotesque.

Canadians and our institutions need to follow the example of Powell and stand on principle against a totalitarian government intent on destroying our democracies and our very sovereignty.

This is not a game; it is our future.