Unnecessary Debts: Eight Leading Economists Explain Why Cutbacks Are Not the Answer to Canada's Debt and Deficit Problem -- And Why a Growth Strategy Is. This item is unavailable.Unnecessary Debts: Eight Leading Economists Explain Why Cutbacks Are Not the Answer to Canada's Debt and Deficit Problem -- And Why a Growth Strategy Is

This book is a forceful entry into the debate over deficit and debt reduction that dominated Canadian politics in the 1990s.
The book argues against the Bank of Canada's contemporary effort to achieve zero inflation through a policy of high short-term interest rates, through which it hoped to put more money in the hands of indebted consumers and thereby generate jobs and tax revenues. The authors maintained that the cost of government cutbacks was too high to be sustained, and that alternative approaches existed to cut deficits--approaches they outline in this volume.
Unnecessary Debts offers a penetrating analysis of the malaise that affected the Canadian economy in the 1990s, and suggests humane alternatives to relentless government cutbacks.

LARS OSBERG is an economist at Dalhousie University in Halifax with a special interest in the labour market and economic policy.

PIERRE FORTIN is a professor of economics at the University of Quebec.