How's Canada doing right now?

In these economic times where the U.S. is struggling financially, Canada is actually not doing bad. Even as both countries faced cheap goods coming in from Asia, we all but totally collapsed a little over a year ago while our neighbors to the north survived. Why?

Rate policies for both nations were pretty much the same. A lot of people, particularly those of the libertarian persuasion, have put the blame on the Fed for keeping interest rates too low for too long. Actually, Canada's interest rates have tracked ours. So interest rates alone don't look like a big cause of the crisis.

On the left, liberals have criticized banks that are "too big," "too interconnected," or "too important to fail." I was one of those when I stated that the government should prevent banks from reaching a certain ceiling. But in reality, Canada has about five banking cabals that control the country's finances. They can grow as big/interconnected/important as they wish. Sound familiar?

The thing is, our friendly neighbors have what we now term a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which is part of the bill passed in the House. Canada restricts their institutions from leveraging like crazy and packaging their mortgages, and also blocks much of their ability of subprime loans. And with these simple regulations that still let banks possess a lot of freedom, Canada has done a lot better than us these days.