Confederation of the Great Lakes

Robert, I am going to share this reply to your 6.2. with the rest of our course. Today, I heard the consul general of Canada in Chicago talk about the Great Lakes. He pointed out that if Ontario and the American states that adjoin the Great Lakes combined into a country, it would have the 4th largest economy in the world and the 12th largest land mass in the world! I chatted briefly with him about economic domains instead of political boundaries; he agreed with me. It may be that the old idea of a Northwest Confederation of the Great Lakes may yet come true as Americans in the heart land grow weary of Wall Street Vampires and Washington Warmongers. The Northwest Confederation was popular during the US Civil War when the Great Lakes states saw no reason to fight for Eastern banking interests against the South. One of the key causes of the US Civil War was the desire of the East to impose tariffs on the South to stop its buying stuff from British industry - in exchange for cottom. New England wanted the South to shop here, not in the UK. The consul general and I chuckled a bit about how history may yet repeat itself - maybe for the better - with the Great Lakes economic domain as a new country. We shall see! Dr. Rux