Moonbox

I agree with you bloodyminded. There is a difference and the real tragedy of this is that the architects of the whole fiasco made out like bandits with little no consequences. The way executives are compensated makes it so that all they're concerned with is present and short term profit. They were getting rewarded on the volume of mortgages they could sell and thus it benefited them to qualify as many people as possible. There was really nothing illegal about this, although I'm sure a lot of them knew it wasn't a great idea long term. In my mind, CEO's and executives need to be awarded on the LONG TERM performance of their business unit. They should have to make sure that their present strategies continue to benefit the company in the long run and their bonuses should be paid out over time or in deferred stock options. Shareholders NEED to make sure their executives have the long term health of a company in their best interest otherwise things like this will continue to happen. Any educated manager/business owner knows that employees will do what they're getting measured and paid for. If a CEO is measured on short term profit, that's what he'll be gunning for and damn the consequences. It's like that for any job from CEO down to general laborer. If you want to prevent systemic greed and recklessness, you have to have systems in place to prevent it. Regulation of mortgage underwriting, such as in Canada, ensures that people can't buy houses they can't show they can afford. Intelligently designed performance incentives for CEO's and employees will ensure that they're doing what's right for the company, rather than what will make the numbers look good today. After all of that though bloodyminded, it seems we're pretty much in complete agreement lol.

I'm not sure you can really call him a white supremasict from those comments. He's perhaps racist against natives, but that's all it looks like. I myself think it's ludicrous how much money we throw away at aboriginals and how much of it they squander, though I wouldn't go so far as to say they can't hold a job...That's just dumb.

That's exactly what Trudeau did coincidentally.

53 Canucks were sold to Belgium. Oh boy! As for SAAB, the company is floundering and there's been a lot of talk about selling the company off altogether. It's barely solvent as it stands. That's not exactly the success story you're making it out to be.

The Gripen is a 13 year old plane that has been purchased for export by almost nobody. A small handful of craft have been purchased and it was mostly because it was the cheapest thing on the block.

Yes I meant 30 million people lol. At any rate, Israel's defense industry is heavily subsidized by the US like Smallc said.

As I've stated before, other countries were not actually excited about the plane by the time it was cancelled. There WAS interest in the early stages and the British were actually going to buy the finished product. Unfortunately the project took too long, the other countries you mentioned came up with their own similar/superior projects that would be coming online around the same time and that's the interest in the Avro fizzled out. So your most likely scenario is that the government trashed the equipment and designs purely out of spite and contempt? It's more likely that the project turned out to be a massive embarrassment and the government wanted to cover up how much taxpayer money they wasted on a dud plane. Name us another country of $30 million with a thriving defence industry. Hint: There aren't any.

I'm going to guess you have no citation for that....

Yes sorry. That's kind of what I'm trying to say I can't disagree with that.

What's your point?

The price hasn't even been set yet. Wait until you see what it's being sold for before you start wetting your pants over it Oleg.

Yes. He wanted to allow foreign banks in to increase competition. That's not a bad thing. He also allowed for 40 year mortgages, which really didn't do anything but inflate the real estate market (Canada's default rates were minimal) and he's since reversed this all the way down to 30 years max. and Harper maintained the surplus until the recession. What a stupid remark. As if Paul Martin could have avoided a deficit...... It all boils down to taxes. If we have less of a surplus because of lower taxes, I'm not worried. If we have less of a surplus because he's blowing his load like Trudeau on social programs, then I have a problem. A good think. I like lower taxes. Explain why our manufacturing base has been shrinking for the last decade, despite our lower tax rate. They need any advantage they can get. At any rate, I'm all for lower federal taxes. So much of the money collected just ends up getting sent to Quebec anyways so they can smoke and complain on welfare. Enough said. True, and something I'm not happy about, but remembering Dion's election promises, as well as Ignatieff's claims that Harper wasn't spending enough to stimulate the economy, the critism is irrelevant in comparison. He didn't know. It didnd't hurt anyone either. No, it had already collapsed. That's why he said it. It WAS a great time to participate in the stock market. I made 60% on my portfolio that year. Buy low and sell high. LoLoL now you're really reaching. This criticism is nothing but hack partisan garbage. You're double-dipping here, just like Ignatieff. You can't criticize Harper's deficits AND criticize him for not including large amounts of stimulus in his original budget. If what you're saying is true, then the deficit is the opposition's fault.

aaaand what about Chretien?

So basically you're saying is it's perfectly reasonable for the West to spit at the name of Trudeau. Good work. It's a bit of a blow to the perception that Calgary is full of gun-totin' Muslim fearin', abortion hatin' Bible Thumpers that everyone makes them out to be isn't it??

I read it. When you link something, however, you generally follow up with your interpretation of the link and why you think it's relevant. This is a discussion board, not a back-and-forth link duel. If you're not going to post anything worthwhile about the link, don't bother. What is it about that link that you think is relevant to the discussion and the OP? You're putting forward a pretty strong case for that being NOTHING. It seems your discussion skills don't really extend any further than being able to type in a web address and copy+paste it to the forum. Pretty funny stuff.

Coming from you that criticism is absolutely hilarious (see my signature lololol). As for the Red Book, what are we actually discussing here? Neither you nor GWiz have actually discussed anything about the platform itself, instead spouting your usual diarhea writing about nothing and instead criticizing posters like you usually do. It speaks well of your ability to present a proper argument. Did YOU read it? They certainly didn't say anything to refute my or Scotty's original post....

It certainly seems like it with his platform. Ignatieff is floundering around with his policies trying to find SOMETHING that might strike a chord....

Exactly. Ignatieff is blowing hot air here. Harper haters have been decrying all of his "once the deficit has been tackled" promises and yet the Liberal leader comes out with a 40 year environmental plan that means absolutely nothing.

Most of Canada does not want a reform-style government. I like their fiscal policies but the Bible Thumping aspect of the party turned me off completely. Old Reformers can lament all they want that has taken its party away from its roots but splitting the party again would simply put Canada back into Liberal majority territory. As for Harper's replacement being even more right of centre, that's highly unlikely. One of Harper's biggest failing is that he has trouble connecting with women, and that's largely because of how out of touch he is with abortion etc. Harper's replacement will be a palatable man/woman who can court the red liberal tory. The hardline CPC vote can be taken for granted.

If taxes are higher then that's a cost of doing business and it goes right into the cost of whatever is being sold. The tax applies to everyone so everyone transfers the extra cost to the price of their goods/services and the competition remains unchanged....at least in your country. It makes investment in Canadian business less competitive overall.

This thread is moronic. When the government increases public sector spending, the budget suffers for it. That has ALWAYS been the case. There has NEVER been a case where spending on public sector employees has reduced the deficit or increased the surplus. The math simply doesn't work that way.

So, like Bonam said, the people in functional families doing more than monkey work. That sounds great to me. I don't think Harper's really interested in courting the welfare vote.

No it's probably because she's a good client with a good job and isn't a big credit risk.

The lenders were willfully misrepresenting their income. They do that in Canada too. That's why USUALLY most banks require borrowers to provide verification of their income. The banks in the US got so greedy that they didn't even bother with that REALLY basic requirement. What would they have gained by pointing out to the authorities that they were stupid and negligent? It was common knowledge already. It seems we do agree, though I'm not sure why you brought Greenspan, one of the architects of the financial meltdown, into the argument saying he doesn't understand mortgage agreements. He's full of BS. They're completely related. Your risk of default has nothing to do with how complicated the mortgage agreement is. There's nothing to hoodwink. Everyone knows what their income is. The mortgage payment is spelled out to you VERY clearly. It doesn't take a colossal mathematical and reasoning skills to determine whether or not the mortgage is affordable to you, unless we're talking about drooling idiots with nails driven through their skulls. Okay but take your agreement one step further and consider that when I say the problem is systemic I mean that it's cultural and goes from the very top to the very bottom. The problem was in the corporate and financial systems, its poor regulation, the government and all the way down to the rich and poor consumers alike. They were ALL greedy and they ALL got themselves into the mess together. A very few people probably made out like bandits with their bonuses, but they were no more greedy/incompetent than the rest of the country. They were simply in the right place at the right time.

Wtf are you even talking about? That doesn't even make sense. They did not state that they were willfully deceiving homebuyers. That's called fraud. Listening to Alan Greenspan weigh in on this is absolutely laughable. Time Magazine lists him as #3 on the list of people most responsible for the financial collapse. It was under his benign influence that the sub-prime fiasco was allowed to happen and he allowed it and encouraged it. As for mortgage agreements being indecipherable, that's retarded. Basically all a homebuyer needs to know on his mortgage is how much the mortgage payment is going to be and how long it will take to pay off. That is ALL he needs to know to determine whether he can afford the mortgage or not. It wasn't indecipherable banking language that confused the poor homebuyers into complicated agreements where they had no idea what they'd be paying month to month. The mortgage agreement says: "Your payment is 'X' dollars monthly" and the homebuyer signs on to that. Homeowners were signing the mortgage agreements and defaulting DESPITE their payments not going up. You don't need to be a financial expert to buy a home. It's REALLY simple stuff. The problem is systemic and across the entire population. It's a shining example of why regulation is required in the financial industry. It shows us that, if not restrained, greed will eventually blow up in everyone's faces. It blows up in shareholders' faces, in blows up in employees' faces, it blows up in the government's face and it blows up in the average persons' face as well.