Definitely sounds like something Canada should be looking at.
Maybe we should adopt their currency instead.
Quote: Originally Posted by china
In summary of the Icelandic revolution, we saw:
-resignation of the entire corrupt government of the country
-nationalization of the bank
-referendum enabling the people to determine their own economic system
-incarceration of responsible parties, and
-a rewriting of the Iceland Constitution by its people
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Definitely sounds like something Canada should be looking at.
FIRST : The Truth About Canada's Banks & Their Success
A lot has been made about the relative strengths of the Canadian banking system. The newspapers are filled with stories about how the focus on "retail" has lead to lower risk profile for the Canadian banks. You have also been reading recently about the superior risk management focus of the Canadian banks and the superior compliance regime of both the banks and the Canadian regulators.
That's pretty neat stuff for us Canadians; hey we're number one! It was all pretty reasonable to the average bloke who has not worked inside the machinery of a big Canadian financial institution.....but I have and I can assure you it is all CRAP!
The reason Canadian Banks are so successful is quite simple. They have an oligopoly structure that lends itself to high margins through low competition strategies. In short, they make tons of profit by over-charging for virtually all domestic services! Need convincing? The evidence has been sitting staring at us for years so lets point out a couple of obvious situations to get us started!
High Interest Savings Accounts: For years the Canadian Banks have made a fortune by offering little or no interest on your savings account. In fact the situation got so ridiculous that a foreign bank figured out that they could pay for their whole expansion into Canada by exploiting the fat margins that existed on savings accounts. Thus that annoying ING guy made his appearance and told Canadians the ugly truth! Your banks are not paying you interest you dummies! Of course the banks were not about to fight back over one measely foreign bank offering fair interest rates.
Think about it.....if Royal has ten billion in savings accounts earning 0.25%, they are not about to start paying 2.25% and give up $200 million in profits. They( and all the other banks) just sacrificed a few hundred million in deposits each, that would drift to ING, counting on Canadian apathy to keep most of the money in their accounts! The Canadian banks did not react at all until the credit unions followed ING's lead; at which time they created a high interest saving option that was not as high as ING and the credit unions, but was enough to stem the flow of apathetic money from the big banks!
Credit Cards: Foreign credit card companies also noticed that Canadian rates were very high, even though losses were quite low. In the hyper competitive card market south of the border, aggressive credit granting and extreme marketing competition pushed card companies into high risk credit granting, expensive rewards programs, and aggressive direct marketing campaigns. No wonder the card interest rates were 19% to cover the losses and expenses. In Canada that was not quite the case. Rates were 19%, but marketing was through the branches to existing customers. Credit standards were still very reasonable and losses were consistently below the U.S. experience. Even better, the banks owned the card processing firms and could screw both the customers (think 19% rates) and the merchants who had to pay outragious fees for the privelege of accepting the cards! Again, the Canadian banks took it to the extreme and again foreign banks eventually stepped in. Check your mail box and see how often a U.S. monoline (sells only one product) firm has sent you a pre-approved card at a low teaser rate. Again, the banks are not about to match low rates and sacrifice the profits from tens of billions in outstanding card balances at 19%, or 24%, or 27%. Let Capital One or some other company steal the crumbs from the table, but never give in to the temptation to be competitive!
Need further proof? Canadian banks are paying huge class action fines for illegal foreign exchange fees on the credit cards! Canadian banks are the leading broker and mutual fund firms in Canada.....and Canadians pay the highest mutual fund fees in the world! Ask the small business guy about the cost of banking services in Canada!
So how does that make our banks the best in the world? How do you explain the lower risk profiles and the lack of idiotic leveraging? Simple actually; Canadian banks just were not willing to pull their capital out of Canada and forego the huge domestic profits to chase U.S. sub prime assets, or expand aggressively into the U.S. capital markets. While foreign banks greedily schemed and took risks to gain any slight advantage in terms of profit, it was a totally foriegn concept to the Big Five! Compete for profits? Surely you jest! Stay home; stay fat and happy!
So now you know! The success of the Canadian Banking System rests with us! If we were not suckers who overpay for all our banking services, then the big banks could not have been nearly so clever! Lets give ourselves a hand! Of course don't forget to thank the government, who through the weakest banking regulations in the free world, continue to let the oligopolies thrive!
Keeping with this fine Canadian tradition; you can apply the same logic to some of the worlds wealthiest civil servants, dairy farmers, and financial planners! Low competition, poor regulations and consumer apathy!
I am Canadian!
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The System is the Scandal :
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and no one should be surprised that Canadian governments, politicians, government employees, corporations and big business executives act dishonestly, unethically, secretively, non-representatively or wastefully --- the system allows them to do so through weak rules, weak enforcement, and weak penalties.
This is not at all to say that all, most or even many politicians, government employees or corporate executives are dishonest, unethical, secretive, non-representative or wasteful -- but if any of these people act in these ways they will often not be caught, let alone penalized, because of loopholes in laws and rules and weak enforcement systems.
No matter what issue concerns you, strong good government laws will help ensure that the government addresses your concerns. History has shown that we won't likely have a good country until we have good governments, we won't have a clean environment until we have clean governments, and we won't have a fair and just society until we have fair and just governments.
Incredibly, the laws and enforcement of parking a car illegally are stronger than most government accountability and corporate responsibility laws and enforcement systems in Canada, and in some cases the penalties for parking illegally are higher than for government officials or corporate executives who act dishonestly, unethically, unrepresentatively, secretively or wastefully!
For the past more than 140 years, since Canada became a nation (and section 91 of the Constitution of Canada empowered politicians to "make Laws for the Peace, Order, and good Government of Canada"), politicians and government officials have not been passing strong good government laws, but instead have been playing a game by sometimes strengthening laws, but then weakening enforcement, or strengthening enforcement at the same time as creating loopholes in laws, and in almost every case penalties have remained too weak to discourage violations.
While governments and corporations do bad things for many reasons, often it is because they are operating in bad ways. Especially when governments operate in bad ways, they usually do not require corporations to act in good ways (because they make secret deals behind closed doors with corporate lobbyists).
And unfortunately, the public always pays one way or another when governments or corporations act in bad ways.
See set out on this page Action Alerts about Democracy Watch's campaigns to increase government accountability and corporate responsibility in Canada -- to ensure governments, politicians and their staff and appointees, and government employees, and corporations and corporate executives, all pay a price for acting irresponsibly.
Politicians, government officials, and big business executives are resisting changes to the system that would increase their accountability for wrongdoing. Canadian politicians have control over their own rules, and Canada's biggest corporations spend $25 billion annually on their lobbying and promotion efforts, so Canadians have to push hard if there is any hope to counter the corporate lobby and win key corporate responsibility changes. They just don't get it, so we have to give it to them until they do!
We know the ongoing lack of response by governments and big businesses to Canadians' concerns is discouraging, but if we give up pushing then bad politicians and governments and irresponsible big businesses will do even more to hurt people, communities, the environment and the Canadian economy.
You can help clean up the system to prevent future scandals by simply writing letters to politicians making it clear that you are part of the large majority of Canadians who are concerned and want changes to clean up and democratize Canadian governments. Never assume that no one else is writing a letter, because if everyone assumes that then no one will write a letter. Politicians actually get very scared when only a small percentage of voters write them, because they are very concerned about losing the next election.
Democracy Watch welcomes your support -- thank you for doing your part for democracy and corporate responsibility in Canada!
Quote: Originally Posted by china
In summary of the Icelandic revolution, we saw:
-resignation of the entire corrupt government of the country
-nationalization of the bank
-referendum enabling the people to determine their own economic system
-incarceration of responsible parties, and
-a rewriting of the Iceland Constitution by its people
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Definitely sounds like something Canada should be looking at.
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---------------------------------
No corruption in Canada? Give me a break!
By Klaus Rohrich
Tuesday, December 12,
An interesting article in the National Post caught my eye last week. It was written by Edward Miguel and Raymond Fisman, two professors teaching economics and business at UC Berkley and Columbia University, respectively. Their thesis revolved around official corruption and which countries fostered the culture of corruption.
Using the number of unpaid parking tickets that UN officials owed to the City of New York, Miguel and Fisman concluded that Chad and Bangladesh were the most corrupt countries in the world, because of 1,243 and 1,319 unpaid parking tickets, respectively. They then concluded that Canada whose UN delegates had 0 unpaid parking tickets, was the least corrupt.
Maybe if we're talking about parking tickets they have a point, as parking tickets tend to be small potatoes not worth making waves. But to conclude that systemic corruption in a nation is indicative by how their diplomats handle parking infractions may be a stretch. The authors stated "to perform such an experiment, you first need to bring together public officials from around the world to the same place where they are given the opportunity to break the law. You also have to make sure that they are permitted to break the law without fear of consequence- in order to remove the influence of tangible incentives, and isolate the effect of culture.”
They then conclude (with certain caveats) that Canadians have "an inner Dudley Do-right” and tend to be the most honest people on the planet. The caveats were disclaimers that, for instance, people tended to adjust to local circumstances, as a Canadian in Nigeria was more likely to engage in corrupt behavior because that's how things get done in there. They even mentioned the recent Adscam scandal that resulted in the Gomery inquiry as an example of how shady government dealings are ferreted out and come to light in a country such as Canada.
But by and large, I think Mssrs. Miguel and Fisman miss the point about the nature of corruption in a country such as Canada. It isn't that Canadians are inherently more honest and decent, it's that we are subjected to a culture of "soft” corruption. We don't have policemen holding out their hands for bribes, as these actions are too crass. We do have the soft corruption of politicians treating themselves lavishly at the public's expense. Our civil servants and heads of crown corporations tend to be particularly adept at bending the rules when it comes to between meal feedings at the public trough, which is evidenced most recently by the Ontario Government's Auditor General, who reported misspending on the part of many high-level executives of organizations such as the Children's' Aid Society. Hydro One's former chief, Tom Parkinson, resigned in disgrace last week after the Auditor General revealed that Parkinson had inappropriately charged $45,000 to his executive assistant's corporate credit card for personal expenses. On top of that Parkinson will now receive a buy-out package worth some $3 million.
In 2000, Sheila Fraser the Federal Auditor General revealed that one billion dollars was essentially unaccounted for in then Human Resources Minister Jane Stewart's department. Then there is the matter of the $600,000 loan to the gran mére hotel, which Jean Chretien, the Prime Minister of Canada personally shepherded. When the head of the Canadian Business Development Bank objected to granting the loan, his career was unceremoniously destroyed.
The Gomery inquiry detailed how nearly $200 million disappeared into various Quebec sponsorship programs, a significant portion of which found its way back into the coffers of Quebec's Liberal Party. Not a single politician was punished as a result of the Adscam scandal, while two small-fry, Jean Brault and Chuck Guité, received slaps on the wrist.
Yes, corruption in Canada is hard to find, but that's more a function of the sophistication of those in power than it is a reflection of their innate honesty.
Klaus Rohrich is senior columnist for Canada Free Press. Klaus also writes topical articles for numerous magazines. He has a regular column on retirementhomes.com and is currently working on his first book dealing with the toxicity of liberalism.Ê His work has been featured on the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and Lucianne, among others.Ê He lives and works in a small town outside of Toronto and
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It would be terrific to have some input in a Constitution of our country ,to have a responsible and accountable Government knowing that the money in a bank belongs to the people .
I also believe that we should return back the death penalty ( for the corrupt politicians ) .That is a decision of the people .
Well its a nice dream .
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Scotiabank to buy ING Bank of Canada for $3.1B
ING Direct name will eventually change
CBC News Posted: Aug 29, 2012 4:50 PM ET Last Updated: Aug 29, 2012 8:51 PM ET Read 105 comments105
ING Direct CEO Peter Aceto holds one of the company's debit cards at the service's launch in 2010. The company's Dutch parent said earlier this month it was considering selling the Canadian unit. (Canadian Press)
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ING mulls sale of Canadian bank unit
The distinctive orange brand of ING Bank of Canada that attracted a legion of loyal clients with its no-fee promise that it wasn’t like the other big banks will itself soon be owned by one.
After the markets closed on Wednesday, Scotiabank announced that it was buying ING Bank of Canada for $3.13 billion.
Scotiabank will put up $1.9 billion and fund the rest through the issuance of 29 million shares at $52 apiece.
From its arrival in Canada in 1997, its distinctive ING Direct brand has championed that it was different — it "wasn’t like a typical bank," as its advertising pointed out.
It had no physical branches, charged no service fees, insisted on no minimum balance in client accounts, offered cheaper and flexible mortgages than the big guys, and consistently paid above-average interest in its chequing and savings accounts.
In just 15 years, those selling points helped it to attract 1.8 million clients and $30 billion in retail deposits. It had another $30 billion in loans on its books, primarily in mortgages.
It quickly grew to become the eighth largest bank in Canada and is currently the largest internet bank in the country.
Struggling parent
But then came the European financial crisis.
Its Dutch parent, ING Groep NV, is struggling to keep its balance sheet healthy amid bad loans in Europe and declining margins.
Earlier this month, it signalled that it was exploring the possibility of shedding its Canadian and British units – something it had already done with its American unit. It sold ING Direct U.S. to Capital One.
Reports suggested that the Big Six banks were very interested in ING Bank of Canada. Its mortgage loan book was considered especially attractive.
But what about that much-ballyhooed distinctiveness? Both sides in this deal rushed to reassure ING Direct’s Canadian clients that it would be business as usual.
"Scotiabank is committed to preserving what ING Direct's customers have come to love about it," said Scotiabank executive Anatol von Hahn, in a release. "ING Direct … customers will be able to interact the way they do now using their existing account numbers and passwords, served by the same familiar team."
Name change within 18 months
Similar assurances came from ING.
"For our customers, we expect no change ... we will continue to offer our customers the highly competitive and attractively priced products that we have become known for, and we will be continuing our efforts to earn more customers with our focus on Canadians who are self-directed," ING Direct CEO Peter Aceto said in an afternoon conference call.
So clients will likely continue to see and hear those high-profile "save your money" exhortations for a while. But change is coming.
Company officials say the brand will survive for at least 14 months after the deal closes. But the name will change within 18 months.
Scotiabank said its takeover of ING Direct should be a done deal by December, subject to regulatory approvals. It said its acquisition of ING Direct would add to its earnings within the first year of ownership.
On Tuesday, Scotiabank reported its third-quarter profits grew by 57 per cent to $2.05 billion as several divisions improved performance and the bank also benefited from the sale of its Toronto headquarters.
