Posted on 03/02/2009 4:17:10 AM PST by dennisw
Edited on 03/02/2009 4:46:49 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
HAS the world turned upside down? America, the capital of capitalism, is pondering nationalizing a handful of banks. Meanwhile, Canada, whose banking system had long been notorious for its stodgy practices and government coddling, is now being celebrated for those very qualities.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Canada is too socialist for me but they got the banking part right. Our bankers and Wall Street’s investment bankers simply cannot be trusted with large sums of money. Greed takes over and they run wild. Dragging down our economy and being bailed out because they are too big to fail
During the Great Depression there were no failures of Canadian banks
ping pong
IF the Canadian banks were forced to give out bad mortgages under threat of penalties, would they be in such good shape?
Perhaps there’s more involved than this opinion piece is stating.
Excellent point. Maybe we can send Frank, Dodd, Pelosi et. al. up there?
I guess they are just a bunch of hard hearted socialists up there plus no minorities to speak of to ladle out affirmative action mortgages to
But Lehman was leveraged at 30-to-1 as it packaged CMOs at breakneck speed. No Canadian bank was allowed this kind of leverage. An easy bet is they didn't get involved much in derivatives and credit default swaps either
Maybe we can send them to jail where they belong.
Both Canada and the US would be much better off with free-market versions of these institutions.
This is America for crying out loud.
This is an interesting column, once you get past the author’s premise that more (Canadian-type) federal regulation would’ve saved American banks from the subprime debacle. “What do you call assassins who accuse assassins?” (Colonel Kurtz).
They don’t need mortgages on igloos and log cabins.
For your list.
Talk like that would get a stubby bounced off your head back in my college days.
Canada is said to have a small number of large banks. Quite the opposite, in the USA, it is our small and medium banks which are strongest. A regional bank in our area, M&T bank, actually just reported a profit increase for 2008
Our large banks, who work hand-in-hand with the Fed and Gov’t already, are subject to strong political pressure already, as the recent crisis shows. I am sure that is something the NY Times article neglects to mention about Canadian banks.
Yeah, bunch of hosers.
LOL.
A small handful of banks in the US who WERE being ruined by government policies that encouraged wrecklessness. 'Greed' had nothing to do with it.
Further, no bank is 'too big to fail' (or go into receivership). That is a political decision made by politicians the foolish electorate has chosen.
MOST banks in the US are doing pretty well and it's up to you to keep an eye on your bank and not just put the blinders on.
That’s a very good point but the banks in Europe and Asia got into trouble because they bought too much American sub-prime paper. The Canadian banks were also hit by that but their exposure was a lot lower, IOW they didn’t gamble more than they could afford to lose.
Right.
They were more conservative. Not faux-conservative.
I prefer the Canadian way of banking any day. I don’t see any derivatives or CMOs up there. If they have them then it is very small
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