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.
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).
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.
Ping Piggy Bank
If Obama continues on his course unchecked, it is possible that Canada could surpass the USA before too long.