February 14, 2000

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The Mail

I’ve decided your Jan. 31 issue (“The best & worst mutual funds,” Cover) is more of a keepsake than your millennium edition. “Too good to be true?” is second to none as a reminder of the foolish times in which we live. The “new era” that has supposedly reformed the business cycle is nothing more than the hyper-myopia of economists who forget were in the midst of the greatest financial asset inflation yet.

Opening Notes

On April 1, 1974, Pam Barrett, then 20, was diagnosed as having advanced Hodgkins disease. She was, as she puts it, “on my deathbed.” After receiving experimental radiation therapy, Barrett made a slow and painful recovery. She later credited her illness with “convincing me to go to university to learn the best way to defend being a social democrat.” By Tanya Davies, Susan Oh4 min

Backstage

A little help from his friends

Shortly after the 1993 federal election, then-agriculture minister Ralph Goodale gave an interview to a reporter in which he discussed complex trade issues at length. Despite the profusion of words, the journalist later wrote, Goodale didn’t say a thing of substance. By Anthony Wilson-Smith4 min

February 72000