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THE HERALD OUTLOOK Saturday July 15 1M the HERALD Outlook Few would want new presidents job BEST AVAILABLE OUTLOOK is published each Saturday the HALTON HILLS HERALD Home Newspaper of Hills A Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited at 45 Guelpb Street Georgetown Ontario Second Class Mail Registered Number Your Business Diane Thomson Nam Strvk Years of corruption and economic mismanagement had caught up with Argentina long before President Carlos Menem took office last week It was a job few would want The new president said he would per form economic surgery without an anaesthetic But the patient already had been bled dry Among the first things Mr Menem did was to cut in half the exchange value of the austral against the US dollar Thats after it had lost 96 per cent of its value since February Such a devaluation is inconceivable by Canadian standards For tourists cheap currency would make Argentina a nice place to visit if it were not for the occa street riots Lowering the value of the na tional currency makes a countrys exports more competitive in foreign markets Indeed Una will have to sell everything it can to earn foreign currency to pay for imports Most of the money earned though will go to repaying the countrys huge foreign debt Argentina owes the world billion U Unpaid interest on the loans has swelled to billion The money must be repaid in U S dollars SCARE SCENE For Canadians Argentinas Berrys World I The plot was thin the acting was fair but the dirty language was GREA 8778822 woes raise more questions than they answer Beunos Aires the capital is a thriving European style city How can it and the en tire country be broke Yet the na tional government has a mere million in U S dollar reserves in the bank hardly enough to buy lunch What can Mr Menem do to pull his country out of default That s a question North American bankers must be asking themselves as they watch the chaos unfold If they are pinning theuv hopes on Mr Menem they might well be disappointed International investors no doubt are watching the situation with in The new government has in cheated that it will ease on foreign investment in hopes of luring new capital invest Building plants and fac tories In Argentina would be cheap given the relative strength of the US dollar Property is relatively Inexpen with condominiums in Buenos Aires attracting the attention of US investors Mind you land in Beurut is cheap too CRISIS AT HAND While Mr Menem may be inten ding to flag foreign investors to the fact that Argentina is open for business it looks more like Argen tina is up for sale at bargain basement prices With billion of debt hanging over their heads the people of Argentina cannot be blamed for being angry Increasingly it is becoming ap parent that many impoverished debtor countries will not be able to repay their loans to North American banks Rather than liv in dread of a wholesale default bankers would be well advised to face up to the situation and write off their bad loans PUBLISHER David A Beattie EDITOR Brian MacLeod AD MANAGER Dan Taylor Donna Kell STAFF Ren SPORTS WRITER Paul COUNTING June Glendenning ANSI ADVERTISING ADVERTISING SALES Jeannine Valpts Craig Teeter Stacie Roberts PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT Dave Hastings Supt Annie Myles Gilson Susanne Wilson by Bruce Beattie CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT Marie Shadbolt Joan PRESS ASSISTANT Todd ft WholPetting the publicity Ottawa Stewart MacLeod If youd been the first person to get it I doubt theywouldve named it athlete s foot Free trade report cards may be misleading Don t put too much stock in those six month report cards on free trade that you may have seen recently The plain fact is that its too ear ly to reach any conclusions on how the historic Canada US deal will affect our country For the present there are other factors interest rates tax changes value of the Canadian dollar government spending cuts for instance that are of greater significance to the economy Some wilt relate these things to the freetrade pact as well Remember the unfortunate remark of Liberal finance critic Roy MacLaren that the deal will be blamed for every sparrow that falls He managed to provide the government with ammunition which eroded his credibility and has effectively silenced him What we have now is a debate on which one side says Neptune is made of Roquefort cheese while the other laughs and insists its really a huge orange Neither side can prove their thesis Take the question of jobs The Council of Canadians and the Canadian Labor Congress say 33000 workers have lost their jobs sine last Jan because of tha deal They are undoubtedly correct that some of those tosses are due to free trade as companies make ad justments to cope with the new era But how many is hard to say Every year hundreds of thousands of Canadians change jobs either because of company decisions or simply because they to work- elsewhere MORE WORKING The government can support its case with the latest job statistics Junes jobless rate of per cent is the lowest since 1981 There are more than 300000 more people working now than last December When freetrade opponents wave their list of dozens of companies that have slashed work forces since Jan Trade Minister John Crosbie taunts them with his own seven or eight page summary of companies which are increasing their investments in Canada He has tormented his critics by refus ing to release that list Some companies have reported ly fired staff because they can take advantage of the socalled Ma quiladora program which allows manufacturing of goods in wage- cheap Mexico and shipping them into the S A recent case cited by NDP trade critic Dave Barrett in volved Bovie Manufacturing Co of Lindsay But this has no confinnable link to free trade For decades com panies have been shifting in vestments to countries where the costs of production are lower In deed Canadas auto industry has been among the beneficiaries of this in recent years Freetrade critics have also sug that our high interest rates leading to a strong Canadian dollar are part of a deal struck with the Americans The argument is that the higher rates deliberate ly make our products less com petitive In the and reduces our hefty trade surplus As evidence the Council of Cana dians cites the trade surplus in April the lowest mon thly figure since September 1901 But its risky to put too much weight on a onemonth figure par tlculariy in statistics as erratic as trade figures High Interest rates in fact have more to do with the Bank of Canadas preoccupation with inflation The council says changes to unemployment insurance the clawback of family allowances and oldage pensldns from wealthier recipients and a trimming of regional development plans are free trade It could be the government is try ing to put on a show for American negotiators as talks near on the critical issue of what constitutes a subsidy Well leadership candidate Simon de Jong certainly made Tom day Or at least we can assume he did Mr de Jong the MP from and one of six declared candidates for the NDP leadership made Mr Wappels day when he said the Liberal leadership contest is attracting more media attention than his own partys And why would this remark mean so much to Tom Wappel Well for openers he is the only declared candidate in the Liberal race As things stand at the mo ment be is the race In the Mr pel must take it as a resounding compliment when one of six NDP leadership hopefuls complains about the Grit race getting better coverage Mind you if we wanted to be en tirely fair we would point out that Mr de Jong was undoubtedly talk about ail the media speculation surrounding such Grit hopefuls as Jean Chretien Paul Martin and the like But why spoil Tom pels day He is after all the only Liberal candidate to bold a news conference to announce his entry And until Mr de Jong suggested otherwise this particular news conference was not a national event In fact have a rather deeply held belief that Tom Wappel is not going to succeed John Turner as Liberal leader Hate to put a damper on his enthusiasm but thats the way it is MAKES HISTORY When the MP from Scarborough West held back toback news con in Toronto and Ottawa to declare his intentions he did make history of sorts No one in atten dance in Ottawa we wont go into numbers could recall another casion on which a potential leader devoted so much time to teaching people how to pro nounce his name Usually this is already established But Mr Wappel had it written for the assembled media is pronounced pell and rhymes with well But even this doesnt put much sting in the slogan Wappel doesn t waffle That having been said Mr Wap- pel clearly does not waffle on ma jor issues Hes dead set against the Meech Lake accord which his party officially supports and hes more dead set against abortion even when the pregnancies are caused by rape or incest He also believes that all lm migrants must be tested for AIDS Some of bis other positions re main to be spelled out but one gets the feeling they will not all be of the traditional Liberal variety But there is one area in which the 40yearold lawyer maintains a tradition Like just about every aspiring political leader in history he says that Canadians no longer recognize the essence of what made our country great If I had a buck or every public figure who held this view in times of need I could comfortably retire