Jump to content

geoffrey

Member
  • Posts

    9,251
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by geoffrey

  1. California delayed tax refunds because they didn't have the cash to pay them as well. Rough stuff.
  2. CPPIB beat their benchmark and yet they still received a paycut. Bravo to the investment management skills of these individuals and managing public perceptions. Good job. They deserved more money. Especially considering how the year ends aren't aligned with other plans and the market downturn Jan-Mar negatively affected their returns more so than private pensions with Dec 31 year ends (those losses won't show up because they've largely been recovered now). CCPIB will likely beat the benchmark as a result in 2009. Just because the public doesn't understand how capital market performance pay is calcuated, doesn't mean that they should suffer. But they did.
  3. The seal hunt is just an overblown issue caused by some sad Newfoundlanders. The trade dollars are tiddlywinks. Why do we waste our political capital on this? It's a stupid concept this day in age and the sealers are unwilling to adapt to the realities of media coverage these days. The GG is a fool for doing this. Canada's reputation is now tied to those that eating the beating hearts out of seals. Fantastic. Can't wait to travel!
  4. From Ontario? Quebec? The Maritimes? The Canadian system is utterly flawed to those paying in. Those getting the dividend cheques, no biggy, good system. Reports today are indicating that bailing out (only to have them collapse into bankruptcy) the auto companies is going to cost our government $10b. To save about thirty thousand jobs, mostly occupied by undereducated and overpaid union members. While in Alberta, equal numbers are being laid off from the oil sands. And our bailout? Where is it? The only "have" provinces left now are Alberta and Saskatchewan. When 4 million people support the other 28 million, the system no longer is functioning. Maybe it's time we cut off the other 28million and leave Canada. Waste of money. The hell if we see our own money anyways. Harper is busy spending it on union jobs in Ontario, not on his constituants in Alberta... where the money belongs. So long as productive industry in the West subsidizes useless union positions in the East, Canada will continue to be very second rate. It's completely inefficent. We could have a soverign wealth fund many times the size of Norway if we paid into that instead of into Confederation in Alberta. Why are we wasting our time for others to squander?
  5. Nah. It's cheaper to purify salt water than invade Canada.
  6. We should refuse tax payments as a province (assuming we could collect our own taxes, which we can if we had the political will). The oil sands will layoff more workers this year than the auto industry. Where is our bailout? The government should "rescue" Suncor and give everyone their jobs back. You could save more quality jobs out here with less money than you can save in Ontario (these people are obsolete regardless, the auto industry will never come back). But that's not what happens. Instead, Alberta's money pays for dropouts to get six figure salaries and bigger pensions that oilsands workers could dream of. That's not a country. That's a f'in sham. We are getting SCREWED. I'll happy support any party that suggests that we stand up for ourselves a little more out here. Or leave.
  7. Ya, this is a disaster waiting to happen up here and down South. We haven't nearly seen the tip of the iceberg on this yet. More and more are unemployed everyday and more of these high risk products are going to default. You can manipulate rules all you want, the reality is that these loans are just trash and will never be repaid. Surveys indicating 1 in 10 Canadians can't afford a $500 emergency is a serious problem.
  8. So long as we can refuse to pay "into" the system as well. But then again, Canada would be second world at best if that happened. Or just stop paying taxes to Ottawa until the views of Albertans are better represented. Why should we pay for Ontario autoworkers? My engineer friends at Suncor that got turfed didn't get a bailout and their RRSP's guarnted by the Feds. What justice is that? Some dropout gets more than an educated person? Shows the priorities in this country. Fools. It's very clear that financial, our lives would be much better if we didn't ship all of our money to the socialists out East, with their government happily holding their hand every day.
  9. I'd say so. Canada faces a huge infrastructure backlog, and this spending will certainly help alleviate that. Better to spend in depressed times than in boom times. It's actually quite effective. The difference between Canada and the US in terms of deficits is that Canada is spending the money on long-lived assets... bridges, universities, roads, whatever. Financing long-lived assets makes sense, bare the cost over the life of the asset. Financing union salaries and pensions like Obama prefers to do is not an effective use of taxpayer indebtedness. So that's what it comes down to Dobbin, what is the money spent on? I'll gladly have the CPC borrow funds to construct a bridge that will last 50 years. I will not support a government that gives billions to automakers and screws investors to just protect union jobs and pensions from getting reduced (even though most of our RRSPs declined, the union boys at GM get the same amount... huh.) I disagreed with the governments of Ontario (Liberal) and Federally (Conservative) giving money to the auto companies. That was bad policy. The rest is ok. No issues with it really. I mean, ideally we'd just slash health care and social programs, but that doesn't fly in any country anymore. Doctor and nurse pay cuts to European levels? Hmm, theres an idea!
  10. Parents that keep their kids from learning in order to preserve some kind of control over their intellectual development (god forbid the kid is smarter than the parents) should be jailed. Parents shouldn't be able to force their children away from enlightened thinking and towards backwards stupidity. Kids have more rights themselves than parents have over them. Every kid has the right to a first class education. Not one that is controlled by ignorant rednecks. You see this kind of ignorance all the time out West, especially here in Calgary. Often I laugh at these people who think they are all so big city, but have their head buried in the Bible all day. While I admire our culture for alot of conservative (non-religious) values out here, the amount of igorance is gigantic. Not suprised to see this kind of thing in this province.
  11. Why have we not built a new facility by now? This plant is decades old and obviously unreliable.
  12. The Liberals get so brave after a few good polls. The reality is that they have little to gain other than in Quebec and a handful of seats in Ontario (if Dhalla hasn't pushed away the immigrant vote there yet...). If Iggy things he has support in the West, he can think again. He is very delusional to waste Canadian's time with an election at this point. Same result... AGAIN.
  13. Victoria day is about the most absurd concept around. Let's take a day off to reflect on the monarchy?! Huh? What a riduclous country. Let's rename this day after something that has meaning or purpose, rather than just the key subject of tabloids.
  14. Guyser, a few bars in Calgary scan IDs, but I haven't heard that they send them to police. They do it so they know who is present. And they have a blacklist of known gang-members, so they can deny entry to those that shouldn't be there.
  15. Theft of bondholder money by union pension plans should also be illegal, but Obama loves that.
  16. 631,000.. oops. Lots of bad news out today as well, capacity utilization down, shipments down, CPI down (if not for a tobacco tax increase). Down down down. The green shoots are wilting.
  17. Fair. No, but even a 20% drop in the REAL economy is substantial in a leveraged-to-the-tits economy like in the US. Everyone down there is so overextended. It's going to be a mess. We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to defaults. Nothing has changed. All the bad mortgages still exist. Nothing at all has changed! Just some fancy accounting and printing of money. Are we going to be running in animal skin undies hunting meat? Probably not. But the way of life we have now will be forever changed. You can't finance your future forever.
  18. Oh, I agree Dancer. The self-employed are a very strong sector, in times of economic growth. It just doesn't reflect economic growth when people go from regular jobs to self-employed because they have no other choice. Many self-employed people are underemployed. Something else not reflected in the statistic. Bankruptcies and mortgage defaults are through the roof this month in Canada. Things are getting much worse. Looking at the results is more important than looking at indicators like that. People are financially crippled now. And it's getting worse. US labour report today suprised to the downside again, another $631k jobs lost.
  19. Liberals win. Nothing exciting. It's becoming like Alberta.
  20. Turf the management. This wouldn't fly in the corporate world. Well, unless your a US bank... but that's another story...
  21. Like my taxes bailing out some useless Ontario automaker dropouts that make 6-figures and have juicy pensions?
  22. Better work on your tolerance of MSG and the taste of Chow Mein! Something neglected from these numbers is the growth in the gap between the funded and unfunded social security obligations that this recession has created. Medicare today will fail in 2017. And Obama wants to expand the reach of this program. God help them down south. This man is going to really going to hurt America for decades to come.
  23. Ya, you think AIG went bellyup because of mortgage underwriting. Unfortunately, your clueless on the topic. I don't have time to teach basic financial system knowledge, sorry. Anyways, bank leverage ratios in general have a massive impact on the value of any economy in which the banks participate. I refer you to Schmukler and Vesperoni... as well as Salvadori. Both of these pieces devote extensive thought to this, as both a cause and effect. Might be beyond your level, or below your absolutely Godlike understanding of things beyond all existing economic theory! Who knows. (By the way, unless your a professor somewhere, I'm far more educated than you in Economics. And I know your not.)
×
×
  • Create New...