There are more than 9,400 banks in the United States.

That compares to the big six (of fourteen) in Canada.

Last year more than thirty U.S. banks collapsed or were closed by U.S. regulators. Another nine were shut down in January of this year. Since October 2008, three hundred and fifteen U.S. financial institutions have been shored up with funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP) and more are likely to join them.

It appears that the sub-prime mortgage fiasco sucked most of the equity out of the U.S. banking system. The domino effect has been felt around the world. Investor George Soros has estimated that it will take another $1.5-trillion to properly recapitalize just the U.S. banks - a colossal sum that the U.S. Congress might be loath to fund. We should care because what’s good for the U.S. economy is good for the Canadian economy.

Royal Bank of Canada's investment arm warned in a report earlier this week that as many as 1,000 U.S. banks could fail in the next three to five years as losses mount on commercial real estate loans.

In Canada, the issue is not so much the banks but the fact that many lending sources have been withholding credit in the wake of the global financial crisis. In his recent budget, Finance Minister Flaherty set aside $125-billion to boost access to credit by acquiring insured mortgages from the banks to free up cash for lending.

Since October 2008, Canada’s economy has lost 213,000 jobs. In January, 129,000 jobs disappeared, 101,000 in manufacturing alone. On Wednesday, Stats Canada data showed that Canada also recorded its first trade deficit in 32 years, reflecting the sudden collapse of U.S. demand and the collapse of commodity prices.

BMO Capital Markets deputy chief economist Douglas Porter called it "a watershed report," Statistics Canada said exports fell faster than imports in December, resulting in a trade deficit of $458 million, compared with a surplus of $1.2 billion the previous month.

It is the first time Canada's trade balance has fallen into deficit since March 1976.

Exports fell 9.7 per cent to $35.3 billion in December, the largest month-over-month percentage drop since October, 1982. Imports dropped 5.7 per cent to $35.8 billion, mostly on volume reductions in machinery and equipment, auto products and industrial goods.

This past week, General Motors announced it is cutting 10,000 “white collar jobs”. Meanwhile, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that PSA Peugeot Citroen and Renault SA will each be given a five-year loan of 3 billion Euros ($3.9 billion) from the government after they promised not to shut down plants or fire workers in France. Renault Trucks, which is owned by Volvo AB of Sweden and some other auto-makers, will receive 500 million Euros in loans.

The automobile sector in France employs about 2.5 million people or 10 percent of the working population. Germany and Italy also find themselves in the forefront of collapse in the automobile sector.

With the global economic crisis, the status of the automobile appears to be changing in society. Automakers who have long been blind to global environmental issues, exploited the SUV market when oil prices were in full explosion. Now they are being forced to accelerate their investments in the design and production of new cars that are reliable, cheaper and more energy-efficient.

Disorder in the automobile industry, even more than the decline of the housing and banking industries, is a reminder of economic history - the rise and fall of industrial destinies.

When "Fortune 500" listings began in 1955, General Motors was the largest American corporation and it was one of the three largest, measured in revenues, every year until 2007. GM was the "largest industrial corporation in the world," in its own description of 1989 and it was engaged, at the time, in "the most massive reindustrialization program ever attempted.

Albert Einstein once said, as if referring to the current economic stimulus climate "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them".

Consider in contrast, Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney’s remarks where he says economic recovery in Canada hinges on efforts around the world to bolster the financial sector. He says "extraordinary steps" are being taken by all G7 countries to keep banks from collapsing. Are they extraordinary or are they simply reactive to the experiences of a depression - seventy odd years ago?

Is this an economic "crisis" or an economic sea-change opening the door to extraordinary opportunity, a transformation that will revolutionize the way we think and live?

Who knows, we could be in the midst of some form of economic and societal revolution where no person or government can determine its conclusion.

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at mailto:bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com