Month: May 2009

Free Market Needed In Television Debate

Mulder

I’m getting tired of the wars going on between local TV stations and carriers.

The answer is simple.  Every carrier should charge a base fee for their service.  (along with the obvious equipment rental charges, etc).

Then every station should be able to set it’s own cost per subscriber.

Then every subscriber should be able to select each individual channel they want with the only exception being they need to have a set percentage of Canadian stations to meet the Canadian Content requirements.  For example, 4 out of every 10 stations chosen must be Canadian. (or something similar)

Then finally, for nationwide conglomerates such as CTV, they take a set percentage of their subscriber fee for paying the carriers and for covering things such as national branding, national level news, for the purchase of programming, etc.  And then they can divvy up the rest to local affiliates based on the local affiliates viewership as a percentage of the national viewership.

I call this the King/Freedman model.  i.e. Can’t we all just get along by letting the Free Market reign?

Jack Layton is Canada's Barney Frank

Mulder

Today in Power Play, Jack Layton said that a reasonable credit card rate is needed for low income Canadians.  Jack Layton is dead wrong.

Good credit card rates are given to people who have a history of paying their cards off.  Bad credit card rates are how banks and lending institutes pay for cards that people default on.

So why is Jack Layton our version of Barney Frank?
In 1999, Democrat Barney Frank called for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to provide low income mortgages to Americans known as NINJA loans.  NINJA stood for No Income, No Job or Assets.  So in essence, what the Democrats, under Bill Clinton, did was to create the conditions for the sub prime implosion that has caused the current recession by allowing people who had no business owning a home to get one at great rates usually reserved for people with Jobs, Income or Assets that are used as collateral.
If you doubt the validity of this, you can read the article at the NY Times by clicking here.

So today, Jack Layton feels that Canadians who are not eligible for low interest rates should get them in a similar fashion to what Barney Frank called for back in 1999.

The whole reason there are different credit card rates is many fold.  One is for points options or freebies.  But the main reason is because people who have no business getting credit often default on their payments and put their credit rating in further disarray.  This in turn makes it almost impossible for them to get a half decent rate.

So the question that Jack Layton needs to answer is…..Does he expect the tax payer to bailout people who have bad credit when they default on the credit cards they have no business getting in the first place?