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Economy Headed For Tougher Times


mrlupin

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You know, my first reaction was "wacko" but I read a little bit of the decisions rendered and obviously, the Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeal agree that there is a case to be argued. A "justiciable issue" is one that reasonably invokes the jurisdiction of the Court and therefore, the claim that the Bank of Canada has "strayed" from its legislated course was not summarily dismissed.

It should also be of general concern that this case does not appear to have been reported in the "mainstream press". Given the potential impact on our financial structure of a decision adverse to the government, one would have thought this merited coverage.

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They may win the appeal because the BoC has strayed from it's original purpose, however, I would bet a large sum that the government is frantically drafting new legislation to "modernize" the legislation that controls the BoC so in the end the whole thing will serve no useful cause.

I agree that the lack of reporting on the whole thing is worrisome.

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“I would bet a large sum that the government is frantically drafting new legislation to "modernize" the legislation that controls the BoC”

Would that be ‘modernization’, or the removal of the guts of the legislation that was originally intended to protect the people from the greed of banksters that would otherwise have their way with the generally unaware masses?

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Would that be ‘modernization’,

or

the removal of the guts of the legislation that was originally intended to protect the people from the greed of banksters that would otherwise have their way with the generally unaware masses?

Same thing.

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.
Republicans gutting Dodd-Frank as Wall St. goes subprime again

It is not mortgages but subprime car loans that U.S. banks are repackaging now for foreign investors

Mon Feb 02, 2015 -CBC News
Neil Macdonald - Senior Washington Correspondent

A forlorn Russian banker named Evgeny Buryakov is sitting in a New York prison, accused of concocting a nefarious scheme to pour algorithmic poison into the very ear of American capitalism.

Buryakov, according to the U.S. government, teamed up with a couple of other Russian agents working undercover as diplomats. Their mission: figuring out how to disrupt America's financial markets using automated trading algorithms — so-called trading robots.

The diplomat-spies claimed immunity, and lammed it back to Moscow, leaving Buryakov in the lurch.

Now, most people, me included, don't understand automatic trading algorithms.

Apparently they can make companies all sorts of money by buying and selling at incomprehensible speeds — basically, an expensive device Wall Street uses to stack the odds even further against the ordinary chump.

Who knows? Maybe the Russians could have done some damage.

But, all due respect to the Justice Department, my guess is Buryakov and his co-conspirators were kids throwing stones at the system compared to the teams of bank lobbyists rewriting laws up on Capitol Hill these days.

Little by little, these influence-buyers are gutting and filleting the Dodd-Frank Act, the package of bank regulations that was among the few big accomplishments of the Obama administration during the two years when Democrats controlled Congress.

These lobbyists represent some of the same corporate villains whose greedy, in some cases criminal, machinations just about demolished the economy in 2008, tossing millions out of their jobs and impoverishing even thrifty and financially prudent citizens.

George W. Bush's decision to rescue them with taxpayers' money (while letting thousands of smaller companies sink) was what ignited the hot outrage and sudden growth of the Tea Party.
Bothersome restrictions

That cause was arguably as just and righteous as the revolt against taxation without representation, the original American grievance from which the Tea Partiers took their name.

Pretty quickly, though, America's more right-wing conservatives seemed to forgive Wall Street.

Banks are the manifestation of capitalism, after all. Sure, they might have gone a little too far but in Republican doctrine they are "job creators" (a rather ironic term for the people behind the 2008 meltdown).

They are also big donors to politicians.

And now, just seven years after so many people nearly lost everything, conservative lawmakers are hard at work dismantling those damned bothersome restrictions placed on banks to prevent a repeat of the great meltdown.

Late last year, Republicans refused to pass a larger spending bill unless the White House agreed to undo a section of Dodd-Frank that forced banks to move their risky derivative trades to units that don't enjoy taxpayer backing.

(Banks love taxpayer backing, as they demonstrated so spectacularly in 2008.)

'The post-meltdown concept of lenders requiring borrowers to have substantial "skin in the game" is also apparently passé.'

.

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  • 2 weeks later...

"This isn’t always a function of wealth, just of narcissism and assumed superiority. I know several witless academic egomaniacs who routinely give themselves a free pass to be uncivil. But because wealth is the most obvious marker of status in capitalist societies, it is also the most powerful lever of being a jerk."

Perfect!

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  • 1 month later...
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More job cuts... Alberta is experiencing layoffs in the oil patches due to low oil prices, exploration work has dropped off for natural resources, GM is laying off 1000 in Oshawa (auto sector is getting weaker and weaker in Ontario)Bell helicopter lays off 300, and now Bombardier is laying off 1800 employees. These aren't "Target" or mcjobs, they are well paid jobs that are not easily replaceable. On the airline front, after reading the AC financial, (and Bean's analysis of what is happening at AC) I notice that although AC seems to be improving it's situation relative to past quarters, it appears to be increasing capacity at the expense of yield. That speaks very poorly of the market's capacity to accept extra capacity. On the Westjet side, it's pretty much the same. RASM is down. It will be interesting to see if this was mostly a quarterly anomaly or if it's a sign of things to come. Bombardier eliminates 1,750 jobs

Business jet demand is down...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bombardier-eliminates-1-750-jobs-1.3073881

Bell Helicopter to lay off 300 in Quebec after winning coast guard contract

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bell-helicopter-to-lay-off-300-in-quebec-after-winning-coast-guard-contract-1.3052255

GM Canada will lay off 1,000 Camaro assembly workers this year

http://www.ky3.com/news/local/gm-canada-to-layoff-1000-camaro-assembly-workers-this-year/21048998_32662660

Timeline: Tracking the layoffs in Alberta’s oilpatch

http://globalnews.ca/news/1889598/timeline-tracking-the-layoffs-in-albertas-oilpatch/

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Not happening in just Ontario or Canada...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-19/iowa-spent-50-million-to-lure-ibm-then-the-firings-started

One paragraph stands out.....

Grassley, a Republican, wrote to Rometty on April 16 to express concern about “reports of mass layoffs” even as IBM requested H-1B work visas to allow 5,800 foreign employees to be authorized to work for the company in the U.S., he explained in an interview. “What are you doing to make sure you make a good faith effort to hire Americans?” he said. IBM declined to comment further on Grassley’s comments.

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Sounds like the deal Alberta and Edmonton made with Dell.

Free land, tax breaks, millions in subsidies. They were gone in less than four years.

I am pretty sure anybody selling "diversification" could take Alberta for millions with little or no effort beyond a powerpoint presentation.

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