Does history repeat? Hmm. Let’s see.

Two years ago, more or less exactly, home sales in Vancouver had plunged by 43%, while the average price of a house in Calgary or Edmonton was down $42,000. The asking price of luxury homes in Toronto’s west end was crumbling.

In fact, signs of an impending economic storm were everywhere. Exporters said “dark times” lay ahead as the US economy weakened by the week. Over 8,400 American families a day went into foreclosure. Canadian inflation was rising fast and gas prices had leapt by almost a third as oil swelled. Mortgage rates were rising. Confidence falling. It was a buyer’s market.

This blog was 90 days old on July 25th, 2008, when I wrote:

“As few as 90 and as many as 300 US banks are expected to fail this year. One, perhaps, two major car companies could declare bankruptcy. The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout may not work, causing the mother of all budget problems in Washington, just as the Presidential election unfolds. As the Canadian exporting numbers and the job losses in Oakville show, our economy is being dramatically affected by these realities. There are families wondering tonight what the hell they’re going to do now after that third shift failed. There are more than 60,000 households across Canada trying to sell their houses. There are companies quietly failing each hour. As I drove through a number of southern Ontario cities in recent days, my eye could not help but see empty stores on main street and vacant units in the industrial park.

“Sadly, the market declines I foresaw nine months ago when I wrote my latest book are starting to occur. The depths are yet to be known.”

Another 90 days passed, and Canada was being rocked by a meltdown south of us, stock market collapse, housing market implosion, the impending bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler, the failure and nationalization of Fannie and Freddie plus a recession which would wipe out 8 million jobs in the US and plunge Canada into structural unemployment while forcing Ottawa and Washington into debts and deficits political bosses scoffed at as impossible.

Those who listened to leaders then, and didn’t take shelter, risked having their investments gutted and their jobs unexpectedly erased. One of those politicians was our finance minister, Jim Flaherty. As 2008 dawned, he was dishing out $60 billion in tax cuts, including a drop in the GST which would wipe out the federal surplus. By the autumn of 2008 he was predicting a balanced budget in 2009. The deficit that year would pass $50 billion.

Yesterday F said this on television: “No disrespect to people who offer economic opinions, but none of them – I mean not one of them – predicted the recession coming to Canada in the last quarter of 2008. And I consult with economists regularly as Minister of Finance, and I respect the views expressed, but their predictive power is limited, and that’s based on the past few years.”

He may consult. But does he listen?

In late 2009 and early 2010, F said there was no housing bubble in Canada, even as the governor of the Bank of Canada was warning households to curtail their borrowing orgy. In one 12-month period, real estate prices increase 23%, or twenty times the inflation rate, while wage gains and job creation were non-existent. Family balance sheets deteriorated as cheap interest rates and bullish talk from Ottawa suckered many into historic levels of mortgage and consumer debt. For the first time, we matched the debt-to-income levels of Americans, where the middle class was being hollowed out by a real estate meltdown.

I mention this because July 2010 could end up looking more like July 2008 than you are being told. In fact, the intervening two years did not bring recovery, restructuring, a credit purge, regulatory reforms or even creative destruction. Just destruction. The world is a weaker place now than then. More important than ever, in other words, that individuals chart their own path and eschew the words from on high.

Now, granted, F and I do not get along. I’ve already told you that on the day Mr. Harper threw me out of my seat in Parliament, his finance minister led the attack behind closed doors, angered, among other things, at my opposition to his 40-year mortgages and fed up at my blog and my lip. “Garth Turner,” he hissed into the caucus room microphone. “is not running an alternative government.” Minutes later I wasn’t running anything.

So we have history. Judge that as you will.

But someone who knows this man must call him out on the last 24 months. And, now, the ones to come.