U.S. economic woes point to wider recession

It isn't often federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty can venture into Calgary and garner a round of applause.

In fact, ever since the infamous Halloween Massacre on Oct. 31, 2006 -- when Flaherty, on behalf of Stephen Harper's Tories, pulled the rug out from under the nation's unsuspecting income trusts and those Canadians who had invested in them, after having promised to leave them intact -- he's been persona non grata in this neck of the woods.

That the finance minister has also been travelling around the country tub-thumping for a single national securities regulator (likely to be located in Ontario) hasn't done much to help upgrade his image out here in the West, either.

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