The Cost of Greed

The Cost of Greed

Postby Oscar » Mon Feb 09, 2009 3:00 pm

The Cost of Greed

February 5, 2009

To the Editor,

Just before the federal election on October 14th, Harper's Conservatives assured Canadians that Canada's economy was fundamentally sound.

Finance Minister Flaherty projected a 2.3 billion dollar surplus for the current year.

On October 10th, the Canadian Government announced that it would takeover $25 billion of bank held mortgages, apparently to "maintain the availability of longer term credit in Canada".

And then, about a month after the election, another $ 70 billion was made available to Canada's chartered banks for the same reason.

We are told that this "recession" is global. And, because we are doing most of our export/import trade with the most powerful and most highly indebted nation in the world, and are using the same monetary system, our economy will probably be affected accordingly.

It has been stated by some financial observers that the most likely cause of this recession is greed.

So where did it all start?

Let's begin with the top of the financial pyramid.

{1} Global private bankers, around for centuries, the wealthy elite, like the Bilderberger's group.
{2} Private banks, including the American Federal Reserve Bank, which have ties to the above, officials who we seldom see or hear about.
{3} Canadian chartered banks, which do have some regulation through the Bank of Canada.
{4} A myriad of financial corporations, many of which do not produce anything of material value or provide a necessary service.
{5} Here in North America, we have Wall Street and Bay Street
{6} The international currency exchange, where trillions of dollars are bought and sold in an almost instant exchange, circling the planet each day.

Many of the financial institutions that have declared bankruptcy, or are asking for government bailouts, had rewarded their CEO's with astronomical annual salaries and bonuses.

In Canada, the top 50 salaried CEO's averaged 15 million dollars annually.

At the top of the list was a CEO who cashed in at the tidy sum of around of 79 million dollars per year.

The average annual salary and bonuses paid to the top 100 CEO's in the USA was also 15 million dollars. But the top prize was awarded to a fellow named Richard Fudd, who was the CEO for Lehman Bros [they pleaded bankruptcy]. Mr.Fudd collected salary and bonuses valued at 454 million dollars since the year 2000!

It is estimated that some of these CEO's received more money before their morning coffee break than the average US or Canadian working person earned in a year.

One hopeful indication is that America's President Obama will make some meaningful changes.

An American citizen, Joseph Stiglitz, former senior vice-president, of the World Bank and Nobel Award recipient, calls this bailout money for the financial interests mess as "cash for trash".

And now in Canada, we have a new sort of coalition of the Harper and Ignatieff political leadership who are rewarding the same financial interests to carry on, so that they can do it again to the next generation of Canadian taxpayers, who will also then have to bear a greater national debt.

Leo Kurtenbach,
Cudworth, Sask.
Oscar
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