7 thoughts on “Toronto tempts bankers tense about Volcker rule – Even the banks want out of the U.S.”
Great news for Canada. I wonder if this ,combined with FATCA, and the resultant loss of capital in the US and many jobs will make the politicians there wake up before its too late?
I just hope that Toronto doesn’t become too dependent upon financial services like London is in the long term. If a financial transactions tax ever does get implemented in the EU and London has to comply I imagine that lots of the banks are just going to move to Hong Kong like they are always threatening to do..
The U.S. simply does not understand that (at least long run) people don’t have to deal with it – and they won’t. It has the highest corporate taxes in the world, it presumes a “property interest” in its taxpayers, it ignores its own constitution, it murders its own citizens, yet from the U.S. perspective:
“God is with us!”
@donpomodoro,renouncitizenship- I hope that this is only the beginning. Some months ago I actually wrote to the TSX and told them that they should be courting U.S. companies to list on their exchange. I hope that more U.S. companies will choose Canada as their headquarters and start to report in Canadian dollars. I believe that there have to be enough financial markets in the world that when put together they can more than make up for the loss of the NYSE and NASDAQ.
The U.S. may have the largest corporate tax rate but that is only on paper. In practise the largest U.S. corporations pay little to no tax. G.E. hasn’t paid any corporate tax for the last few years. Google pays no taxes either. And remember that any profits that are earned overseas are not taxed by the U.S. until and unless those profits are brought to U.S. shores. The U.S. has been talking about giving a reduction in corporate income tax as an inducement to having those profits brought back.
@donpomodoro
I have been meaning to make a post about this subject for a long time. Going back several years now Canada has in fact been the harshest critic of any type of global transaction tax or bank tax. Check out the following blog post from 2010 and notice who was the first commenter on it and what comments he made
It will be interesting in the next 72 hours if there are any political consequences to come out of this article. The Volcker rule is something being hotly debated in the US.
@tim- a global bank/transaction tax would be the dumbest thing that the politicians could do but in the aftermath of a crisis politicians are prone to do stupid things. A global tax on financial transactions would increase the cost of capital, decrease the captial available for lending, and give the politicians a slush fund which they can use to create more of their ill conceived spending programs.
… and the beat goes on, and the beat goes on …
(remember Sonny and Cher? Oops there I am, dating myself again …)
@Everyone
On this front I heard from a couple of people over the weekend that there are some real serious discussions about moving energy/commodities trading desks from Houston and New York to Calgary. I have heard the Bankers Hall building is the top location for office space in Calgary for all of the major banks like Goldman Sachs.
Great news for Canada. I wonder if this ,combined with FATCA, and the resultant loss of capital in the US and many jobs will make the politicians there wake up before its too late?
I just hope that Toronto doesn’t become too dependent upon financial services like London is in the long term. If a financial transactions tax ever does get implemented in the EU and London has to comply I imagine that lots of the banks are just going to move to Hong Kong like they are always threatening to do..
The U.S. simply does not understand that (at least long run) people don’t have to deal with it – and they won’t. It has the highest corporate taxes in the world, it presumes a “property interest” in its taxpayers, it ignores its own constitution, it murders its own citizens, yet from the U.S. perspective:
“God is with us!”
@donpomodoro,renouncitizenship- I hope that this is only the beginning. Some months ago I actually wrote to the TSX and told them that they should be courting U.S. companies to list on their exchange. I hope that more U.S. companies will choose Canada as their headquarters and start to report in Canadian dollars. I believe that there have to be enough financial markets in the world that when put together they can more than make up for the loss of the NYSE and NASDAQ.
The U.S. may have the largest corporate tax rate but that is only on paper. In practise the largest U.S. corporations pay little to no tax. G.E. hasn’t paid any corporate tax for the last few years. Google pays no taxes either. And remember that any profits that are earned overseas are not taxed by the U.S. until and unless those profits are brought to U.S. shores. The U.S. has been talking about giving a reduction in corporate income tax as an inducement to having those profits brought back.
@donpomodoro
I have been meaning to make a post about this subject for a long time. Going back several years now Canada has in fact been the harshest critic of any type of global transaction tax or bank tax. Check out the following blog post from 2010 and notice who was the first commenter on it and what comments he made
http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2010/04/canada-and-the-bank-tax.html
It will be interesting in the next 72 hours if there are any political consequences to come out of this article. The Volcker rule is something being hotly debated in the US.
@tim- a global bank/transaction tax would be the dumbest thing that the politicians could do but in the aftermath of a crisis politicians are prone to do stupid things. A global tax on financial transactions would increase the cost of capital, decrease the captial available for lending, and give the politicians a slush fund which they can use to create more of their ill conceived spending programs.
… and the beat goes on, and the beat goes on …
(remember Sonny and Cher? Oops there I am, dating myself again …)
@Everyone
On this front I heard from a couple of people over the weekend that there are some real serious discussions about moving energy/commodities trading desks from Houston and New York to Calgary. I have heard the Bankers Hall building is the top location for office space in Calgary for all of the major banks like Goldman Sachs.