Report on Bidness: Slim gets Gates, Pensioners get Bell, You get Taxed

Queue the Minutemen. While Canadians are taking top speech-writing and campaign positions for the Republicans from Washington to Shwarzenegger's Gahlifornia, as jobs are outsourced to Thomas Friedman's Bangalore, it looks like Mexicans aren't only taking the jobs nobody wants anymore. It looks like it's 'Slim'-pickings for Microsoft founder Bill Gates who has been dethroned as World Richest Rich Person. That's what you get for giving it all away!

The new Richest Rich Person (no, I haven't yet found his e-mail address for solicitations) is Carlos Slim, Mexican financial dynamo and owner of America Movil. Slim's rise has been meteoric, because that's a word they use a lot to describe really fast rises: He has gone from Latin America's Richest to overtaking Warren Buffet (formerly Mr Gates' #2 - uh, I mean the second richest...) in April and now Gates. Besides having the name of a cowpoke, Slim's wealth is equal to 8% of Mexico's GDP. No word on whether he likes Eminem.

Before we all get high and mighty that US jobs are going to us foreigners (MUHAHAHAHA), Canadians are not above trying to protecting our jobs. In the recent 'hollowing out of Canada' debacle that has just concluded. An all-Canadian (wave the flag, queue the Maple Leaf Forever or something, Darren) merger between Telus and BCE, lovingly named 'Belus' like a celebrity couple, was averted. Instead the company is now majority owned by Canadians (as was always its CRTC-ordained fate) and a group of American private-equitizers. So, Mr Gates notwithstanding, Americans can be proud they've managed to break a record this week (this is the largest private equity buy out EVER, ever, ever), and we will smugly take pride that it couldn't happened without us. Courtesy the EEEKonomist.

Tony's gonna be pissed...if he's still alive. A story about New Jersey and turnpikes! I've already made a stereotypical Soprano's reference! Before I run out my welcome with the locals, I'll try get through this. The E-Z Pass(American 'Zee') is a new computer-aided innovation that makes getting ou-er, around a lot easier on the highway. For those who live in the modestly named GREATer Toronto Area, you may be familiar with the Express Toll Route transponder, it's much the same. You drive zip-bloop-bleep you're charged the toll. Will the ETR-economy is not a good buzzword. For those who are angry about David Miller's newly sanctioned land tax (GTAers?), the NYT presents a story about all the taxes you DON'T know about in the EZ Pass Economy.

Alright, let's never do this again...until next time.