A reader of Isaac Brock sent me the following letter:
Dear CBA:
It’s time for your organization to start standing up for your customers on this issue. You can do much more than encourage the Government to sign onto an egregious foreign governments demand (IGA) to throw Canadian sovereignty out the window to simply protect your members bottom lines.
There comes a time when every person and or organization has to take a principled stand and now is that time for your organization. When the government of Canada says no to signing onto an IGA, which would be tantamount to political suicide, it’s going to land squarely in your court. Are you going to compromise the rights of your loyal customers to respond to what amounts to IRS extortion? Do you think your members and shareholders would support a strong, principled, well funded resistance? Absolutely, once they know the facts. Get the facts out there. Spend some of our money edifying people on this issue. Use the press, use your members resources like the annual rational for increasing fee structures.
It is what it is: The school yard bully wants your lunch money. How do we instruct our kids to handle bully’s? Bully’s don’t expect a fight. It’s time you guys gave them one. It’s time you guys gave something meaningful back to your loyal customers and helped the government of Canada on this issue. Stand up and show some courage and initiative.
I’ll be the first one in line to sign onto a class action if any of my banks ask me where I was born. I’m a Canadian ….end of story.
Sincerely,
[Name withheld by request]
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Read these articles, and ask your Canadian bank why they fought so hard against the Volcker Rule, but are adamantly in favour of capitulating to FATCA?
“…….. Intense lobbying by senior Canadian officials including federal finance minister Jim Flaherty and former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney has successfully blunted far-reaching implications for the country’s largest banks from the biggest overhaul of financial regulation in the United States since the Great Depression.”
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/12/09/volcker-rule-release-will-be-bankings-test-for-nafta/
“But the final version of the Volcker Rule, a key plank in the U.S. reform that aims to rein in the type of speculative trading by banks that led to the financial crisis, will nonetheless require Canada’s biggest banks to add a layer of costly and time-consuming compliance systems simply because they have operations in the U.S.” http://business.financialpost.com/2013/12/10/volcker-rule-canada-banks/ ‘What the Volcker Rule means for Canada’s biggest banks’
Barbara Shecter | December 10, 2013′
@badger
So the banksters alone couldn’t do enough damage to the world economy.
It’s seems that Canadian banks are coming to the realization that the US isn’t such a friendly place to do business anymore.
As costly as FATCA will be to Canadian banks, I can only speculate that the Volker rule will have much more of an impact on Canadian banks and the Canadian economy in general than FATCA would with an IGA.
The one comment associated with one of the articles should be interesting to Canadians:
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/12/09/volcker-rule-release-will-be-bankings-test-for-nafta/
@badger
Should we be encouraged by the fact that Canadian banks through their and the Canadian government’s lobbying were able to get some carve outs to the Volcker Rule?
I wish there’d been more information on the issue effecting mutual funds and snowbirds. Under Volcker, did the tie breaker rule not apply when it comes to mutual funds?
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/12/10/volcker-rule-canada-banks/