Blacked out documents are blacked out documents. None is no more acceptable in a democracy than the other, be it to hide the truth about detainee torture or the real truth about tax leakage from income trusts. Not only did the media turn a blind eye to income trusts investors, that rag that Jim Travers writes for, the Toronto Star, played an active role in attempting to mislead Canadian about tax leakage, for the simple (and pathetic) fact that Torstar Inc. had a commercial interest in doing so, making Torstar an acive opponent to democracy and an active opponent of reporting the truth. What a bunch of pathetic losers. Almost like the Taliban themselves.
Travers: Did we turn a blind eye to Afghan prisoners?
February 25, 2010
James Travers
Toronto Star
OTTAWA–In the winter of 2007, three insurgents captured by Canada's top-secret Joint Task Force Two disappeared into the notorious Afghan prison system. Three years later, Prime Minister Stephen Harper suspended Parliament rather than release related documents that raise difficult questions about the role of this country's special forces and spies in targeting, capturing and interrogating key enemies.
Linking those events are fears about what happened to Isa Mohammad and two other prisoners transferred to Kabul control by Canadians after successful Kandahar operations. In a private 2007 briefing, the prestigious International Committee of the Red Cross expressed concern to Canada that the men had either been killed or were being held by the U.S. in one of its controversial "black site" military prisons.
Dispatches detailing those worries, the names of the three missing men – as well as a fourth who Canadians found – and Red Cross frustration over the military's persistent failure to provide timely, accurate prisoner information are in the files the Harper government is withholding. Along with the parallel testimony of Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin, those documents pose a political problem for ruling Conservatives. More significantly, they are a threat to relations between Ottawa and Washington, which this country sent its troops to Afghanistan largely to reinforce.
As the Maher Arar case demonstrated, not much tests cross-border goodwill more than public Canadian scrutiny of security and intelligence operations involving the two countries and their clandestine agencies. And not much is more sensitive in either country than the handling of prisoners, particularly those captured, tortured or killed as the result of closely coordinated covert operations.
In Canada, a January 2002 news photograph exposed the super-elite JTF2 unit transferring prisoners to the U.S troops, provoking a Parliament firestorm and damaging the career of then-Liberal defence minister Art Eggleton. In the U.S., controversy over the torture of detainees goes back to 2004 and the horrors at Iraq's Abu Ghraib and continues today over the "rendition" of prisoners to offshore military jails, most notably Cuba's Guantanamo Bay.
Driving those tensions still higher is the part played by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Jack Hooper, then CSIS deputy director of operations, testified to a 2006 Senate committee that the spy agency had been actively supporting the troops since their Afghanistan deployment and claimed success in disrupting attacks, uncovering weapons and saving lives.
Those activities, and the close cooperation between Canada and the U.S. in Afghanistan, help explain the Prime Minister's fierce determination to silence the prisoner abuse debate here. Apart from poking huge new holes in the suspect argument that all detainees are treated well and according to international law, releasing the documents would strain the tightly interwoven fabric of special force and intelligence efforts.
What distinguishes the special forces from the broader Afghanistan mission are its cutting-edge skills, the high value of its targets and an ultra-secretive need-to-know command structure. Unlike the bulk of Canadian troops fighting under the NATO umbrella, JTF2 has long been associated with the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom.
As a source familiar with its work put it this week, the force works side-by-side with the U.S. "to pick up or pick off " top Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders.
There's little startling in what JTF2 and CSIS are doing in Afghanistan. Most Canadians will accept commando raids and civilian spying as particularly necessary in a war against an enemy fighting outside the accepted rules of engagement.
Much more troubling is the implication that this country was complicit in Afghans "disappearing" prisoners, or that Canada became a partner in the U.S. rendition scheme that trampled legal and human rights.
Harper prorogued Parliament in December at least in part to put an end to awkward opposition questions about what generals and ministers knew about Afghan abuse of combatants captured in routine operations.
Now the Prime Minister can only hope that next week's throne speech and budget will distract attention from something much worse: Worry that Canadians turned a systemically blind eye to their allies' shameful methods.
James Travers' column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
No Jim Travers, you turned a blind eye to income trust investors
Globe and Mail selects Marshall Plan as one the top ten Budget requests
Not sure why the Globe ranked The Marshall Plan as number 4 as opposed to number 1, as requests submitted by Globe readers for the Marshall Plan received 9 of the top 10 highest rated comments, as voted by Globe readers.
In any event, The Globe writes today:
(4) Income trusts. Easily one of the most requested fixes. Many people also cited the Marshall Savings Plan as a possible replacement. Here are just a few of the many thoughts readers had on the subject:
- Revise the plan to change the way income trusts are taxed. There are plans available that would leave trusts very much as a source income without any tax leakage.
- Eliminate the proposed tax on Income Trusts. This proposal has been an absolute disaster, and the government has failed to prove that there will be any tax loss resulting. In the meantime it has made Canadian Trust businesses weaker and subject to foreign takeovers
- Marshal Plan - The solution for seniors who frantically search for income on their retirement savings is the Marshal Plan. The solution was Income Trusts but Flaherty killed that. Interest rates are too low to provide retirement income and dividends are double taxed in sheltered accounts (RRSPs, RRIFs). The Marshal Plan is a great solution to overcome these challenges for seniors.
- Cancel the Income Trust Tax Betrayal and end the Double Taxation in RRSP's...the Marshall Plan will do both and the government will get a windfall in taxes from happy seniors
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Ex Goldman Sachs' Mark Carney breached his fiduciary duty to Canadians by lying about tax leakage
Did Goldman Sachs Breach Their Fiduciary Duty to CDO Investors?
http://wallstcheatsheet.com/author/damien-hoffman/
Posted on 23 February 2010.
This morning, Bloomberg released more excellent journalism on the Goldman-AIG-Fed scandal. A secret document shows “Goldman Sachs underwrote $17.2 billion of the $62.1 billion in CDOs that AIG insured.” Thus, without a doubt, this is like Toyota knowingly manufacturing cars with faulty breaks, then buying insurance for protection in the event of a mass recall.
For those unfamiliar with some basic legal principles, a fiduciary duty is “an obligation to act in the best interest of another party … whenever the relationship with the client involves a special trust, confidence, and reliance on the fiduciary to exercise discretion or expertise in acting for the client.” In this case, Goldman (and the other underwriters including Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank AG, and others) owed a fiduciary duty to the investors who bought the CDOs these underwriters distributed. And we all know these CDOs ended up in portfolios across the globe.
If Goldman et al created these instruments with their “expertise”, then their bets against the CDOs is direct evidence the iBanks betrayed their fiduciary relationship with anyone who bought their CDOs. If every CDO is tracked back to the original underwriter, investors should bring forth a class action. In the meantime, the Toyota hearings in Capital Hill should be followed by the more entertaining hearings during which Congress actually gets to the bottom of the greatest heist in history.
What do you think about the role of investment banks in both creating and betting against toxic CDOs? Share your comments below or click here to join the discussion in our new Forum.
What would a Goldman Sachs investment banker possibly know about the needs of Canadian retail investors?
Macleans writes about Mark Carney “proving Carney was no yes-man by successfully pressing the Conservatives to break a prominent campaign vow by taxing income trusts.”
Now what would a former investment banker from Goldman Sachs possibly know about what’s best for the average Canadian “retail” investor? Goldman Sachs has no dealings with retail investors anywhere on the face of this planet including Canada? In fact what does Mark Carney even know about the Canadian equity capital markets, as he’s never done a single deal while at Goldman Sachs that involved the Canadian equity capital markets. So why do you suppose he “press the Conservatives to break” their income trust promise? So that Goldman Sachs client Abu Dhabi Energy could acquire Prime West Energy on the cheap, not to mention the other 50 takeovers of trusts that have cost all Canadian taxpayers to lose $1.5 billion in annual tax revenue to solve a non existent tax leakage problem that was one third that size? Mark Carney is both deceitful (eg his phony tax leakage claims) and incompetent (causing three times as much tax leakage as he claimed he was stemming).
No wonder he was downsized by Goldman Sachs. Con man indeed!
Confidence man
Upbeat and daring, Mark Carney takes the Bank of Canada into uncharted waters
by John Geddes on Tuesday, March 17, 2009 5:09pm -
Confidence manCentral bankers aren’t often looked to for a steady supply of lively quotes. They’re usually so worried about spooking financial markets that they couch every phrase in monetary mumbo-jumbo and economic escape clauses. But Mark Carney, who took over as governor of the Bank of Canada early last year, has a punchier way of expressing himself.
About those reckless lenders who got the world into its current economic mess, he has observed that they were too easily distracted by “opera or the ski slopes of Davos.” Concerning the naysayers who doubt that stimulus policies will restore growth, he’s lectured that “the laws of economics have not been suspended.” And to those who say he’s too much of an optimist, Carney recently rebutted, “We don’t do optimism, we don’t do pessimism. We do realism at the Bank of Canada.”
It’s pithy material, a touch disdainful perhaps, and more than a touch self-assured. And it all comes, not from a typical central bank boss, seasoned and grey, but from a 43-year-old former financial markets wunderkind, whose experience in government stretches back only to 2003. Carney flew fast to one of Ottawa’s loftiest economic perches, only to find himself looking out over the bleakest economic landscape in at least a generation. Yet his style so far has been defined by what passes, these days, for a distinctly positive outlook.
Carney’s willingness to see light at the end of the tunnel might eventually make him appear prescient. Or it might make him seem Pollyannaish. What’s clear already is that, right or wrong, he has emerged as the most distinctive voice on the federal scene on by far the most pressing challenge of the moment. “He’s just that bit more direct,” says David Laidler, a veteran Bank of Canada watcher and University of Western Ontario emeritus economics professor. “If a few more off-the-cuff [quotes] get more attention than he wants, it might make him think twice before he makes the next.”
For now, though, an often staid capital is glad to get to know Carney. It’s not just his knack for a memorable phrase. He’s a notable presence at Ottawa social events, particularly in younger crowds that extend outside the establishment mandarinate circles in which previous bank governors tended to move. Immaculately attired, invariably poised, he is the picture of the elite, globe-trotting player. He grew up in Edmonton, where his father was a professor of education history at the University of Alberta, before earning economics degrees from Harvard and Oxford. Riding the updraft of a 13-year private sector career at Goldman Sachs, he worked in London, Tokyo and New York, before returning to Canada as the global financial firm’s managing director of investment banking in Toronto.
It was there that then-Bank of Canada governor David Dodge recruited him six years ago. Friends say public service was the lure. Ottawa’s manageable scale and pace might also have mattered: Carney and his wife, Diana, an economist he met at Oxford, have four young daughters. After a brief initial stint at the bank, he shifted quickly to the federal Finance Department, where he made an impression, overseeing the multi-billion-dollar sale of Ottawa’s stake in Petro-Canada, and proving he was no yes-man by successfully pressing the Conservatives to break a prominent campaign vow by taxing income trusts.
When Dodge was ready to retire, Carney’s name popped up on the short list of possible successors. Inside the bank, Paul Jenkins, the rock-solid deputy governor, was viewed as the obvious man for the job. But outside the bureaucracy, among some investment bankers, Carney was rumoured to be the more likely choice. In this case, the outsiders proved to have more insight. The appointment made Carney an obvious star, but also a conspicuous target for critics. He soon rattled Bay Street, following up two cuts in interest rates in early 2008 with a surprise decision last June, at a point when another reduction was widely expected, to hold pat. Among analysts who make their livings anticipating interest rate fluctuations, the unexpected is always unwelcome. One bank economist grumbled that Carney “had some explaining to do.”
But adjusting rates in the first half of 2008 turned out to have been a breeze, compared with the market tsunami that hit a few months later. Like other central bankers, Carney was hopeful early on that the collapse in the U.S. subprime real estate market—and other signs of spreading market trouble—wouldn’t spark a full-blown recession. “What we’re trying to do,” he said in January last year, “is make sure that current issues in the financial system do not impact the broader economy.”
That would have been nice. By last fall, the meltdown was so catastrophic that a recession became inevitable. The question was whether the Bank of Canada, like other major central banks, could sufficiently shore up consumer and business spending with aggressive interest rate cuts.
Carney projected more confidence than most. At the Davos World Economic Forum, Switzerland’s annual jamboree of business and government movers and shakers, he was invited to participate in the closely watched economic outlook panel. His forecast for the economy to begin rebounding late this year, sufficiently for Canada to post solid growth in 2010, was markedly more sunny than, say, the panellist from the International Monetary Fund. Carney said markets weren’t paying enough attention to, among other factors, the pledge from G7 governments not to let any other “systemically important institution” collapse. “The power of that and the degree of commitment to that,” Carney told the Davos crowd, “has been underestimated.”
Back in Canada, Carney took much the same tone, cautioning market players not to sell short the ability of finance ministers and central bankers to manage economic turmoil. He did not, of course, dismiss the seriousness of the slump. “What began last autumn as a relatively controlled slowdown,” he said, “has become a sudden, synchronized, and deep global recession.” Jobs would be lost, and Canada’s gross domestic product would fall 1.2 per cent this year, according to his forecast. But GDP would rebound 3.8 per cent in 2010. The main stimulus tool behind that bounce, he suggested, would not be direct government spending so much as lower interest rates. “Don’t underestimate the impact of what we have done,” he told reporters in Ottawa.
In fact, he appears to have overestimated the power of rate cuts to buoy up confidence. Early this month, he cut the bank’s key interest rate on overnight loans between commercial banks to a bottom-scraping 0.5 per cent from one per cent. That leaves virtually no room for him to make it any cheaper to borrow money by traditional means. What’s left for Carney to do? He said his next step would be “credit and quantitative easing,” a phrase that’s unlikely to make it into any compendium of his memorable quotes. Yet these might be the most historic words he has spoken. Quantitative easing might be jargon, but, as one commercial bank economist observed, it amounts to a central banker’s “nuclear option.”
The bank has never before engaged in quantitative easing. The precise moves Carney has in mind likely won’t be revealed until the bank’s quarterly monetary report next month. But private sector economists say what’s coming is that the bank will print money to buy up government of Canada bonds or even corporate bonds. That unprecedented intervention should raise the price of the bonds and lower the interest paid on them. The aim is to reduce the stubbornly high longer-term rates in the corporate bond market, making it easier for companies to borrow money.
Other central banks are embarking on a similar course. But for Carney, taking the quantitative easing plunge amounts to a test of personal credibility. Resorting to such an extraordinary measure implies a rebuke to his previously optimistic outlook. Don Drummond, TD Finance Group’s influential chief economist, credits Carney with having directed consistent policies and appropriate rate reductions. But Drummond sees Carney’s forecasting record as weak. “All of us have been humbled by the need to constantly revise down growth forecasts,” he told Maclean’s. “But the bank has consistently been more optimistic than us, and has had to make some very large downward revisions.”
Drummond wonders if Carney would have intervened somewhat more swiftly if he had been more alert to this economy’s downside. David Laidler, from the University of Western Ontario, also suspects Carney should have moved “a bit faster.” But Laidler also sees this as the moment when the young governor’s Goldman Sachs background might give him an edge, as he prepares to head down the uncharted path of directly buying up bonds. “It gives him a lot more experience where he needs it,” Laidler says. “The problems come from inside the finance sector.” For Carney, the test now might be to find a way, at a moment of high anxiety, to lend a bit of his own confidence to financial markets that could badly use some.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
UPDATE The Globe owes me an explanation
Instead of explaining themselves, the Globe reinstated my original comment of:
Brent Fullard comments:
I should have added that the Marshall Savings Plan will generate $6 billion in tax revenue PER ANNUM and will therefore deal with Canada's deficit crisis while at the same time put the 75% of Canadians without pensions on a more level playing field in terms of investment choice with the 25% of Canadians with pensions and therefore addresses Canada's pension crisis.
In an Environics Research Poll of Feb 4 - 9 conducted via 1,000 random phone calls across the country, the Marshall Savings Plan has the support of 79.6% of Canadians, and support from Conservatives was the highest at 85% and the Bloc was the lowest at 75%.
See more details at MarshallPlan.ca
Diane Francis of the Financial Post called the Marshall Savings Plan "brilliant".
Is Flaherty capable of being "brilliant", while responding to the wishes of 80% of Canadians? Time will tell.
Recommend This Comment: 45
Disapprove This Comment: 3
Just how many MPs get letters like this?
Yesterday Conservative MP Jim Abbott (pictured above) announced he wasn’t going to seek re-election, meaning that he’s now eligible for a $108,516 a year fully indexed pension for life.
According to Jane Taber “His greatest successes, he believes, were in constituency work, especially when he was able to help miners in his riding recoup at least some of their pension earnings when the coal mine where they worked went bankrupt.”
Well good for him, but that completely overlooks the role that he played along with his intellectually bankrupt Harper government in lying to Canadians about tax leakage and causing 2.5 million Canadians to lose $35 billion of their life savings.
What do we elect and pay these people for anyway? To lie and steal from us? Speaking of being paid and elected, I wonder how many of our paid and elected MPs get letters like these in the mail, which are but five of the letters I received in the mail today:
Rob from BC writes: Brent: Way to go - Keep it up!
Joyce from Ontario writes: Keep up the excellent work! I love the Marshall Plan.
Perry from Ontario writes: Brent. Thanks for the great effort you are putting into this trust issue – it is greatly appreciated. Please find enclosed my cheque to assist with your great work – I think we will win eventually. Need to keep the pressure on – you are doing a great job in this respect.
Stan from Alberta writes: Thanks Brent for your hard work on this issue!
Bob (a WWII air force vet) from BC writes: Brent, Many many thanks for all your efforts – I am afraid our crooked politician will find some way to continue to hide the truth. We will keep it up. Big Question: Who the Hell do we vote for – they are all the same?
