Urgency to Reduce Debt:

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty urged European leaders to find a solution to their debt crisis quickly, or risk further harm to the global economy.

“This dire and pressing problem threatens not only Europe itself, but all countries,” Flaherty told a business audience at a luncheon for the Canadian Club in Toronto. “Ongoing uncertainty stemming from the European sovereign and banking crisis is leading to broader contagion outside Europe and global credit markets.”

European nations are currently grappling with a sovereign debt crisis that is threatening the euro and European Union itself. Several nations have already received bailout funds from the International Monetary Fund and other bodies, but larger and larger economies are moving to the centre of the crisis —increasing the impact on the global economy.

‘Households don’t operate like this and neither should countries.’—Finance Minister Jim Flaherty

Canadian government officials have urged the continent’s policymakers to tackle their growing debt loads with concrete solutions for months, a message the finance minister continued on Friday.

At the same time, Canadian and US consumers are getting a different message:

How much crazier can Black Friday get?

As reports of shopping-related violence rolled in this week from Los Angeles to New York, experts say a volatile mix of desperate retailers and cutthroat marketing has hyped the traditional post-Thanksgiving sales to increasingly frenzied levels in the U.S.

Several incidents marred Friday’s sale — including smash-and-grab looting, pepper-spraying of customers, and bloody scenes in the shopping aisles. Analysts say several forces are at play.

With stores opening earlier, bargain-obsessed shoppers often are sleep-deprived and short-tempered. Arriving in darkness, they also find themselves vulnerable to savvy parking-lot muggers.

“These are people who should know better and have enough stuff already. What’s going to be next year, everybody getting Tasered?”—Theresa Williams, marketing professor at Indiana University

Add in the online-coupon phenomenon, which feeds the psychological hunger for finding impossible bargains, and you’ve got a recipe for trouble, said Theresa Williams, a marketing professor at Indiana University.

Are we confused?

At one end of the spectrum governments tell us to refrain from spending on the other end big corporations launch advertising campaigns enticing consumers and households to spend.

Watch the movie: Century of Self

Read the complete article from CBC news: Finance Minister Jim Flaherty

Read the complete article from CBC news: How much crazier can Black Friday get?

 Discussion Questions:

 1. Do we have a spending problem in Canada, just like the USA and Europe?

2. Do you think we are able to sustain our  World resources by consuming more and spending more?

3. What would happen to our economy the day we decide to stop frenzied spending? (ie. purchasing items that we only need vs what we desire).

 Both articles from the CBC news website.