I personally believe that there's going to be a good case for the government preserving some type of guarantee to make sure that people have the ability to borrow to finance a house even in a very damaging recession. I think there's going to be a good case for that.

The FHA's success provides strong evidence that government can and should play a role in the nation's mortgage finance system. It also demonstrates that although government intervention in the economy during the Great Recession was messy things would have been a lot messier without it.

Canadians know that the promise of a recession didn't happen because of anything we did here. If you look at all the causes of the recession problems in mortgage markets the problems in the banking sector the problems in government finance in countries like Greece none of those problems were in present Canada.

As sure as the spring will follow the winter prosperity and economic growth will follow recession.

State governments generate less revenue in a recession. As state leaders struggle to make up for lost revenue legislatures tend to cut funding for higher education. Colleges in turn answer these funding cuts with tuition hikes.

I don't think the Palestinian people or Afghan children or some other things I'm concerned about are at the top of other people's agendas - not right now when America is going through such a recession and people are suffering across the board financially. But I think all that will change.

Some argue that now isn't the time to push the green agenda - that all efforts should be on preventing a serious recession. That is a false choice. It fails to recognise that climate change and our carbon reliance is part of problem - high fuel prices and food shortages due to poor crop yields compound today's financial difficulties.

Up until the Depression recession had a moral character: it was supposed to purge the body economic of the greed and excess that attends a business expansion.

Recessions are hard on people but they are not hard on art.