The March 23 Daily Star (Page A4) has a fascinating article on Mitt Romney and a quote from his senior aide Eric Fehrnstrom: “Well, I think you hit a reset button for the full campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”

This when asked if Romney’s positions in the primaries isn’t too far right to win the election.

Etch A Sketch is then depicted as a classical American toy. The article in fact shows that it is not: it was invented in France. Much more to the point, this specific toy was mentioned years ago as one that was outsourced, costing many American jobs, with very small payback as the (much cheaper) version from China still had to be shipped and boxed.

I remember a fascinating statement made by one of the leading executives running a bid for a software system at a certain bank. This executive represented the bid of a company whose initials are not HAL. When questioned about what was being actually delivered as opposed to what was proposed in the winning bid, this individual said, “You’re confusing sell with install.”

Back to Mitt Romney and the Etch A Sketch. Those believing his apparent position now may be confusing sell with install. If the primary race is won, a reset button can be hit before the presidential campaign itself begins. Those believing that an Etch A Sketch is a fine American toy should realize it was “sold” in France and is “installed” in China.

I was reminded of this by a cake mix my wife turned into angel food the other day.

Long ago, my younger brother asked me to bake a cake. Not knowing it was supposed to be tricky, I simply got permission, got out a cake mix, and followed the instructions. Angel food, in the pan with an island. It was pretty good. We at the whole thing ourselves before it really had had a chance to cool.

I remember the mix: it came in a simple package and you added your own fresh egg. Much later I found out why this step was in the directions: it’s a marketing ploy.

In the age of multiple jobs, multi-tasking, not enough time, cake mixes were part of the solution to getting things done somehow. So the company made a cake mix to which you simply added water and stirred. It did not sell.

Enter marketing. Marketing said, the harried housewife does not feel she made a cake , if she just adds water and stirs. Mixing in your own fresh egg makes a personal contribution to the result. So the advertising and directions were changed to add this step.

It turns out that nothing in the cake mix was changed. You could still succeed without adding an egg, a fact rarely disclosed. The extra egg added a bit of body and fluff, I guess; but more importantly, it meant you put some of yourself, your own fresh egg, into dessert.

There’s a lesson in here somewhere. Humans need to feel that they contributed to the final result. Despite the pressure to be efficient, lazy, mechanized, we still want to add our own fresh egg.

A large area using a single currency will tend to exacerbate original, possibly small, regional differences. The manufacturing industry in The Netherlands was badly damaged by the discovery of offshore energy deposits. This new source of wealth drove up the country’s currency, making their manufactured exports uncompetitive.

Alberta is doing this to Ontario as we speak.

Free Trade is an even wider force for competitive ruin. We buy everything from China, because it’s cheaper there, and await their return of all that cash to buy everything we have left they might want. Mostly, investment in our energy out west. Soon I expect real estate, if it turns out you can still make money in real estate in Canada. (doing what? banking? for whom? bankrupt middle class-ers? accommodation? for whom? bankrupt middle class-ers?)

Now Iceland, which has had some interesting experiments with financial activities, is talking up adopting our loonie. This is a very bad idea. Iceland is an energy-economy country. That means Alberta would have competition, and Ontario would have two Albertas forcing the currency up and our competitiveness down.

My understanding of the IceSave debacle is, er, fairly rough. There were some investments. They were held mostly in the UK and The Netherlands and done via banks in those countries. When the investments went south, those countries’ banks were legally obliged to cover some of the losses. The legal position of Iceland at that exact time was such that it was not obliged to cover those same losses. There were unfriendly noises from Britain and Holland. The Icelandic (? never get these titles right) equivalent of parliament voted to pay up. It amounted to tens of thousands of dollars for every man, woman, and child in the country. The equivalent of their President said, should I fail to sign this bill, by law it goes to a referendum. He did and it did. Massive voter turn out. Major vote against.

This is the last I heard of this debacle. I do recall some vague details of what the Icelandic central bank did. They split the bank in trouble into two parts: one holding the potential bad debt, the rest holding all the good stuff. Hasta la vista, baby, went the bad bank. The good one is still operating and quite profitable.

So, what’s my point, you are asking. I have several.

• No currency sharing. No currency sharing. No currency sharing. What I tell you three times is true (with apologies to Lewis Carrol, eh?). Do not let this happen. Not with Iceland. Not with the USA. Not with anybody.
• Currency mitigation should be part of federal policy. Ontario needs the cash equivalent of the competitive losses from the higher dollar.
• We need a new Prime Minister. One that doesn’t hate Ontario and love Alberta. One that doesn’t think the world’s largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions is A-plus OK. One that doesn’t think the tales of mutated fish and carcinogenic chemicals downstream of The Tar Sands is fine, so long as he doesn’t have to live, eat, drink, or breathe there. One that doesn’t understand that 200 tankers per year (one estimate) through our western seaboard is an environmental risk of major proportions. One that listens to voices other than his own. One that considers opinions other than his own. A leader, not a dictator. One we can trust.