Who cares? This is an economics forum, not a political forum. Harper's right... everything catered to and revolved around giving U.S. consumers what they wanted... and U.S. consumers took full advantage of it by spending more money that they didn't have than ever before.
Politics has EVERYTHING to do with economics my friend, whether you like to believe it or not. If what's good for economics isn't considered good politics, then all of a sudden it isn't considered good for economics anymore either.
Harper's political motive for making that statement has absolutely nothing to do with the economic point I was making.
While it was a stupid statement, it doesn't compare to the stupidity and amount of ridiculous statements Bush made