Blazing Cat Fur uploaded this new video featuring free speech warriors Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn. It also has funny Canadian commercials!
They talk about Mark Steyn’s new book “After America”.
Tag Archives: Banking
Fiscally conservative Canada campaigns against global bank tax
Excerpt:
Canada will “resist” a bank tax, Industry Minister Tony Clement said Tuesday as ministers fanned out across the world to raise opposition to the proposal for avoiding another financial crisis.
“Canada is, and will remain, opposed to a tax that would penalize financial institutions that remained strong and prosperous while many of the world’s banks failed,” Clement told a press conference with Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon.
“We will resist the bank tax here at home and we seek to convince other heads of government of the virtue of our position,” he said as senior ministers echoed his message in Mumbai, Beijing and Washington.
Attempts to reach international agreement on coordinated bank taxes at last month’s G20 and IMF meetings ran aground.
Nations including Canada and Brazil, whose banking sectors emerged largely unscathed from the financial crisis, objected to the plan, favoring higher capital reserve requirements instead.
[…]Clement said the bank tax would “encourage risky behavior” if it is used to create a bank bailout fund and “reward bad behavior” of those institutions responsible for the recent financial crisis in the first place.
As well, it would “unduly burden” Canadian banks and put them at a “competitive disadvantage” to other financial institutions.
“This tax would reach into consumers’ pockets and punish our financial institutions which have taken precautions to avoid the very turmoil that is afflicting other parts of the globe,” Clement lamented.
Stephen Harper is a fiscal conservative. He knows that low interest rates are bad, so he created tax-free savings accounts to get people to work and save their money. And he knows that people who buy houses need to be able to pay for them, and his banking policies reflect that. There is no Democrat-sponsored “Community Reinvestment Act” in Canada to allow the socialist mafia (ACORN) to pressure private banks into making risky loans. And there are no Democrats taking political contributions while blocking attempts to investigate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And there are no bank bailouts!
The Conservative Party of Canada keeps its banking sector squeaky clean. They even plan to cut spending! And the Canadian people support fiscal conservatism. That’s why they aren’t facing the mess we are facing. And they have lower unemployment, too – 8.1% compared to our 9.9%. Canada is kicking our tails! How can this be? How did they manage to elect an economist, while we are stuck with this perpetually-bowing flibbertigibbet and his legions of bloviating boffins, each more corrupt and incompetent than the last? Democrats have no real-life experience! They just had rich parents!
Look at this article from the Financial Post.
Excerpt:
“In Canada, there were no taxpayer bailouts of financial institutions, so we believe there is no justification for levies on banks and financial institutions,” Harper said at a news conference following meetings with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy.
[…]Canada and the EU are in the midst of negotiating an ambitious trade deal. The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) was launched at the 2009 Canada-EU summit and to date, three rounds of negotiations have taken place. There are at least two more to go over the next year.
The deal will give Canada greater access to the markets of the EU’s member countries and will strengthen an economic relationship that is already worth $75-billion in trade. The EU is Canada’s second-largest trading partner after the United States and is also Canada’s second-largest source of direct foreign investment, putting $162-billion into Canada in 2009.
This is grown-up fiscal policy. Government should stay out of the mortgage-lending industry, and sign as many free-trade deals as possible. The exact opposite of what the Obama administration is doing.
MUST-READ: Wall Street bankers gave Obama millions in campaign contributions
Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner reports on Obama’s new bank bailout bill.
Excerpt:
President Obama likes to say we need to clean up Wall Street. But let’s be clear: He is pushing a job-killing bailout bill for Wall Street that benefits his top financial contributor from the 2008 campaign – a firm that just happens to be under investigation by the SEC for defrauding investors.
Despite the President’s rhetoric, his support for the Democrats’ bailout bills gives big Wall Street banks a permanent, taxpayer-funded safety net by designating them “too big to fail.”
[…]Goldman Sachs, recently charged with defrauding investors, was President Obama’s top Wall Street contributor during the 2008 election cycle, donating nearly $1 million to his campaign.
- Securities & investment firms in general were the fifth largest contributor to President Obama’s 2008 campaign, donating nearly $15 million.
- Big banks also donated more than $3 million to Obama during the 2008 election cycle.
And some details about what the new bank bailout does:
- The Dodd Gives Wall Street a Pre-Existing $50 Billion Bailout Slush Fund. Sen. Dodd’s financial bailout bill would create a $50 billion ‘orderly resolution fund’ ($150 billion in Rep. Barney Frank’s bill) that could be repeatedly replenished from industry assessment.
- The Dodd Bill Gives Wall Street a Treasury-Backed Credit Line. The FDIC would be authorized to borrow from Treasury up to the amount of cash left in the ‘resolution fund’ plus 90 percent of the value of the assets of any and all too-big-to-fail firms in its control.
- The Dodd Bill Provides a Government-Guaranteed to Wall Street Debt. The FDIC would be authorized to guarantee the debt of any solvent bank, bank holding company, or affiliate in any amount subject only to an aggregate debt limit set by the Treasury Department.
- The Dodd Bill Institutionalizes Unlimited Wall Street Bailouts. The FDIC, as the resolution agency for too-big-to-fail firms, would be given wide latitude to use resources to make payments to anyone in any amounts, at their own discretion.
Now let’s hear more about the rich bankers from Goldman Sachs.
Goldman Sachs
This Newsbusters article explains Goldman Sachs’ connections to the White House:
- White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel used to work for Goldman Sachs.
- Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner used to work for Goldman Sachs.
And the Washington Examiner reports that:
- Former White House counsel Greg Craig is now employed by Goldman Sachs.
Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs are often filled with Democrats.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
And don’t forget that the government-backed companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were run by Democrats, and they were also bailed out by the Democrats.
Excerpt:
Freddie and Fannie used huge lobbying budgets and political contributions to keep regulators off their backs.
A group called the Center for Responsive Politics keeps track of which politicians get Fannie and Freddie political contributions. The top three U.S. senators getting big Fannie and Freddie political bucks were Democrats and No. 2 is Sen. Barack Obama.
Now remember, he’s only been in the Senate four years, but he still managed to grab the No. 2 spot ahead of John Kerry — decades in the Senate — and Chris Dodd, who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.
Fannie and Freddie have been creations of the congressional Democrats and the Clinton White House, designed to make mortgages available to more people and, as it turns out, some people who couldn’t afford them.
Fannie and Freddie have also been places for big Washington Democrats to go to work in the semi-private sector and pocket millions. The Clinton administration’s White House Budget Director Franklin Raines ran Fannie and collected $50 million. Jamie Gorelick — Clinton Justice Department official — worked for Fannie and took home $26 million. Big Democrat Jim Johnson, recently on Obama’s VP search committee, has hauled in millions from his Fannie Mae CEO job.
Political contributions and bailouts. Is there a connection?
WINTERY KNIGHT 