eal state of public corporations and their audited reports issued for public consumption when massive debt has been shifted off the company’s balance sheet.The “level playing field” catch-word distracts attention from the monstrous discrepancy between the accountancy practised by the government in its own books and what the large corporations get away with. The corporations hide their debts by keeping them “off-balance-sheet.” The government buries its investments. The level playing field is the Mother Lie that has birthed the swarm of distortions and untruths that are now crawling out from under every table and from every crack in the walls.It is gratifying that the media and some of our politicians are starting to recognize some of what ER had warned about for many years. But the most basic lie is still protected by the greatest of taboos. It goes on being drummed into freshmen’s heads in every country of the world. No Finance Minister can open his mouth without it jumping out at you. The mirage of a self-balancing economy made up of tiny actors that are all powerless individually to affect prices is the “scientific” version of the “level playing field.”That could hardly cover an economy dominated by the Microsofts, General Electric, and the Enrons. Surely you have to deal with that obvious clash between the fine theory and the reality to which it is being applied. You might as well send astronauts to Mars, with instructions based on the assumption that the planet is made of cheese cake.That the level playing field nonsense goes on being taken seriously, and is used to justify countries surrendering their sovereignty merely on the basis of this rhetoric, indicates the mighty power structures that run the world. That is why Sylvia Ostry, one of Canada’s leading negotiators in the Uruguay Round of negotiations that led to the WTO, has said: “We had no idea at the ou...
