Wednesday, November 10, 2010

This week's Hill Times


Read here.

6 comments:

Dr Mike said...

As a seafaring country , we hear the stories about the perfect storm where certain events happen at the same time that can create catastrophic results in a quick fashion

We sure had ours.

We had the near perfect investment vehicle.

We had greedy CEOs.

We had a willing gov`t.

We had a weak & ill informed opposition.

We had a compliant media.

Boom , the seas riled , trusts were sunk & the little guy investor drowned.

How wonderful to live in a country where the illogical is still possible.

Dr Mike Popovich

Bruce Benson said...

Yup Mike, aint it wonderful, the Canadian public, the Press and the Loyal Opposition couldn't give a rats ass. Oh, one more amazing observation, most Income Trusts Companies sat on their ass and never got very proactive. They should have blasted the government every day by running TV and print media ads. Funny thing is the Liberals should have done the same. The CEO's of the trusts after drastically cutting dividends can now jump on the same CCCE gravey train. Everyone of these exec's filling their pockets first, damn the shareholder.

Anonymous said...

This article points out that our Prime Minister was led by opinion and not by fact. That makes me wonder if that is the way a country should be run. If there is no concrete evidence to back up their decisions what does that leave? The more we delay getting back to the Income Trust model the more our country will suffer from real tax loss. Income Trusts were healthy choices for investors. They were a way for our country to grow. They gave hope to elderly investors who never had company pension plans. They put money into the government coffers. They invested their capital and grew their businesses. They were a definite asset to our economy--providing jobs for Canadians.
Now the corporations will take over and the excess funds will go to the corporate leaders instead of the share holders. How will that create new jobs? How will that help Canada? How will that help the investor to support him/her self?
Mr. Harper needs to look at the facts and admit the truth. We will respect him for that. Forgiveness is possible. It is his choice. BB

Kid Leduc said...

The story provides some good background. It's the first story as I recall to point out that Harper was (and continues to be) an immature PM (which is why he's a control freak) and that Flaherty is the most recent reincarnation of the Winking Fool on the Hill.

Flaherty timed his income trust to October 31 -- the night for any big scare. What a joke!

He costs retired investors $35 billion of their savings and he had fun doing it on Halloween.

What a joke?

crf said...

About the Reinvestment argument (eg, that income trusts will prevent this).

Lets assume this is true. So what? If people think that this is a serious limitation on trusts that will affect their competitiveness, then investors don't have to buy them at prices offered. This should be obvious to even our Prime Minister, even granting that he was de facto flunked out of U of T's graduate economics program.

There isn't really a case to be made that investors were buying trusts not knowing what they were getting into. That they are buying trusts is not secret information.

There is little possibility of "bubble" behaviour coming into being based on people misinterpreting the structure of a company. Bubbles happen, usually, when the future prospects of industries as a whole are misinterpreted by the market. The corporate structure of companies within that industry isn't going to affect whether a bubble inflates.

There is a reason why there is no outcry about the sea of lies this decision swims in. You just have to ask yourselves "who got hurt"? Not corporate officers of former trusts: they get paid no matter, and probably more in a traditionally structured company. Not traditionally structured competing companies in industries where trusts were becoming prevalent: trusts companies were competitive, which put pressure on traditional companies, which put pressure on costs, including costs to corporate officers. Removing trusts made the environment less competitive, and made safe the corporate fat.

Who got hurt:

Investors who were in trusts. A lot of small investors.

And MOST IMPORTANTLY the economy as a whole! This is something that hasn't been as effectively analysed here, at CAITI-ONLINE. In killing trusts, we went from a more competitive environment to a lesser one. More comparate structure tailored to companies' needs, to less structures. This is very simple: less competitive is usually bad. People bemoan Canada's lack of productivity, lack of business investment in technology, and the difficulties in raising capital for medium-sized companies. So, what do we do? We kill one corporate model that was successfully raising capital because it led to many efficient, focused companies (and not, as has been ably demonstrated by the people writing this blog, because it was a tax break).

And we replaced it with what? Worse than the status quo. Now big companies know that they don't need to worry too much about intra-Canadian competition. They will just cartel the hell out of this country, and if they get into trouble, put on a puffy suit and get the Ottawa fawners to shower them with whatever laws they want. Like in America, this will stoke a party for a time, until our companies' uncompetitive positions in the global marketplace tell the final story.

Anonymous said...

Where are the Harper and Flaherty supporters now? If this doesn't prove how incompetent these tow guys are nothing will.

Of course, Cons never let the facts get in the way of a good opinion.

Railhound