The NZ experience is, unfortunately, contagious. What is interesting is that in Canada the process seems to have been modelled on the NZ experiment. First, a (perceived) centre left government gets elected on a moderate, proactive economic program, then manufactures a phony credit crisis (deficit, debt, bankrupcy -- wail, wail), - a 'crisis' orchestrated by the multinationals, the monetarist central bank and the department of finance and right-wing think tanks (sic) -- which can only be solved by cutting social programs, lowering taxes to the rich, privatizing public enterprise, and firing civil servants. The economic results are disasterous (more deficit, debt, bankrupcy, unemployment -- wail, wail, wail) so obviously, the cure is more cutting, slashing, destroying of programs and lives, etc. What is most disgusting is that this is consciously planned and orchestrated by business and the sychophantic right-wing ideologues, usually misidentified as economists. For a detailed account of the neo-liberalization of the Canadian Liberal Party (comparable to the NZ Labor Party) see Maude Barlow and Bruce Campbell, _Straight Through the Heart: How the Liberals Abandoned the Abandoned the Just Society_ (Toronto: Harper-Collins, 1995). Just as a footnote, it is interesting that the book was "printed and bound" in the United States. (Not approved for reading by the IMF). Paul Phillips, University of Manitoba
