Even Canadian Bankers are Hoping that the "Occupy" Movement is a Success

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released a report yesterday, showing that Canada's income disparity is growing faster even than that of the U.S.  Low paying jobs and a diminishing middle class, are partly to blame, but also deregulation, that allowed the wealthy to become even wealthier, is a huge factor.

Jim Flaherty was on the defensive in the House yesterday, suggesting that his government has been creating good jobs, but all they created was a marketing strategy:  The Economic Action Plan.  They had no real economic plan, other than to move lobbyists and Goldman Sachs into their offices on Parliament Hill.

Do we really expect that lobbyists have our best interests at heart?  Or Goldman Sachs?

Do you know what Goldman Sachs employee Mark Carney did before being named to head up up the Bank of Canada?  He advised Russian oligarchs during the period of mass privatization, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

According to Wikipedia:

During the 1990s, once Boris Yeltsin took office, the oligarchs emerged as well-connected entrepreneurs who started from nearly nothing and got rich through participation in the market via connections to the corrupt, but democratically elected, government of Russia during the state's transition to a market-based economy.  The oligarchs became extremely unpopular with the Russian public, and are commonly thought to be the cause of much of the turmoil that plagued the country following the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The Guardian described the oligarchs as "about as popular with your average Russian as a man idly burning bundles of £50s outside an orphanage".

Historian Daniel W. Michaels suggests that the Russian people were better off under Communism, as the word "corrupt" has replaced "authoritarian".  You would think that capitalists would want to make their system more palpable, in order for it to survive, but instead they have only exposed the ugliness.

Bankers on the side of the "Occupy" Movement?

In October, TD Bank CEO Ed Clark, spoke of the imminent threat to Canada's economy, citing several root causes. 

Consumer and employer confidence, demographic forces that are causing demands for government services to grow faster than revenues, and globalization that has produced massive increases in income around the world, but its benefits have been unevenly distributed.

Clark's speech combines the economic with the social, something that is missed under neoconservatism.  As Margaret Thatcher once said, "There is no such thing as society".  Neocons believe that if you allow the rich to get richer, the benefits will "trickle down", but that isn't happening.  It didn't work for George Bush and it won't work for Stephen Harper.

However, Clark presents another cause of our economic woes:  "divisive politics", and he urged business leaders and politicians to "stand against divisiveness and political extremes."

Even with a majority, Harper continues to play political games instead of focusing on the needs of Canadians, and engages in Nixonian politics, instead of governing.

During the 2006 election campaign the media asked Paul Martin how much he thinks about strategy.  He replied "seldom".  They asked Stephen Harper the same question, and he replied "24/7".  Nixon's response to the same question was 6 days out of 7, and that was after he won the election.  It's politics all the time, and the constant game playing is hurting everyone.

At a time when all elected officials should be putting their heads together to sort out this mess, the Conservatives prefer to go it alone, suggesting that only they can save us.

Only they can bail out our banks and then lie about it.

Only they can spend $18 million more on gazebos for Tony Clement's riding, than infrastructure in Attawapiskat.

Only they can expand our prisons when Canada's crime rate is the lowest in history.

Only they can buy planes without engines and contemplate the purchase of nuclear submarines, while Canadian citizens are suffering.

Only they can bloat their cabinet and enlarge their executive with Parliamentary secretaries, meaning fewer elected MPs working for anyone other than the Conservative Party of Canada.

Ed Clark also offers some advise to the Occupy movement:

Asked by the Toronto Star what he would tell the protesters, he said: "My main advice is stick to your guns. When people say, 'You don’t have a solution,' say, 'Of course we don't. If there was a solution, don't you think people would be doing it?' To ask the people who occupy Wall Street or Bay Street to have a full answer is absurd. They're doing their job which is to say, 'If you think this [system] is working for everyone, it's not.'"

Globalization isn't working. Neoconservatism isn't working. Partisan politics are not working. 

This government is failing us so we need to build on this "Occupy" movement.  We need more government revenue, not less, but instead of hitting workers, as Flaherty has done, we must go after corporations and our wealthiest citizens, demanding that they start paying their share.

We've propped them up long enough.

Please Take Part in This Important Telethon to End the Suffering

There is a devastating situation in Canada that has earned little respect from our media, and yet an entire sector of our population is suffering. We as concerned citizens, must reach deep in our hearts and our pocketbooks to end this.

Unless we can raise $100,000,000,000 by midnight tonight, I'm afraid the entire corporate welfare state will collapse.

Yes folks. I hope you're sitting down. Bank executives are having to ... I'm having trouble even finding the words ... TAKE A CUT IN PAY!

National Bank of Canada chief executive officer Louis Vachon saw his pay in 2010 slip from 2009 as the bank fell short of its earnings target, the bank said Thursday. According to the bank's management proxy circular, Mr. Vachon took home a total of about $5.2-million last year, compared with $5.6-million in 2009.

That's a cut of $400,000. How will he manage? Maybe I could send him Mike Harris's old menu that he provided to those who saw their welfare benefits cut by 42%. Mostly beans and tuna, but at least Louis will be getting his protein. Poor man will have to keep his strength up for the troubling times ahead.

We could send him the senate report on poverty, but Stephen Harper threw it in the trash.

So tune in to our 'Save the Bankers Telethon' and give us your pledges. And please be generous. For a contribution of $1 million or more, you will receive the collectors edition of Goldamn Sachs financial records and a copy of Jim Flaherty's latest book, 'How to Screw the Canadian Taxpayer Without Them Even Knowing It'

Just call 1-8-GREEDYBUMS

(This message brought to you by The Conservative Party of Canada)

Jim Flaherty and Goldman Sachs: The "Cooling Off" period

This is the next in my series on Jim Flaherty's Canadian financial crisis, and how we got there. Since it's not registering that Canada had a massive bank bailout and we are now the proud owners of $125 billion worth of rotten paper, I went back to the beginning, so you can see how we got here from there.

Stephen Harper has always supported bank deregulation and often chided the Liberal government for being too cautious. It's a good thing they were. As Trish Hennessey says in her piece: The Quiet Erosion of Canada’s Regulation System

Canada’s economy was shel­tered from the worst of the 2008 global economic meltdown because our bank regulations are tougher than they are in competing jurisdictions like the U.S. Fol­lowing our own high standards paid off, and protected Canadians from the eco­nomic devastation that brought entire nations such as Iceland and the U.S. to the brink of ruin.

Yet our federal government continues to quietly deregulate Canada. Our own Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is warn­ing against strong regulatory practices. In a speech to the G20 in January 20102, Harper warned other nations against ‘ex­cessive’ financial regulations — a coun­terintuitive message, given strong regulations saved Canadians from the economic devastation our American counterparts are experiencing today.

Given that deregulation in the United States paved the way for Goldman Sachs to almost destroy the global economy, we might want to ask why our finance minister has made a Goldman Sachs employee, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, who has become a cheerleader for Harper's policies.

And he's brought along another Goldman Sachs employee to act as an advisor. We simply aren't tearing down our safety net fast enough. And this new Goldman Sachs employee, Timothy Hodgson, will be handling derivatives, like the ones that help to bring on the economic crisis?

Matt Taibbi wrote for the Rolling Stone, a piece called, Wall Street's Bailout Hustle, as he reveals the con game played by Wall Street and Goldman Sachs. He calls the current period the "Cool off", which in the grifter world is the calming down period. Get your mark to trust you again.

But given that Wall Street, bailed out by the taxpayer, is again engaging in reckless behaviour, he believes that we are heading toward another meltdown.

The bottom line is that banks like Goldman have learned absolutely nothing from the global economic meltdown. In fact, they're back conniving and playing speculative long shots in force — only this time with the full financial support of the U.S. government. In the process, they're rapidly re-creating the conditions for another crash, with the same actors once again playing the same crazy games of financial chicken with the same toxic assets as before. (2)

Only this time Canada's safety net is full of big gaping holes and Wall Street has paved it's way to Parliament Hill.

Stephen Harper, Jim Flaherty and Their Cooling Off Period

The first "cool off" for Steve and Jim came in the fall of 2008, when they announced with much fanfare that they were closing the door on 40-year, no down payment mortgages. What they didn't mention was that the only reason Canada had mortgages like that was because Steve and Jim allowed AIG, Goldman Sachs and other American gamblers to bring them to Canada.

But economists and bankers were sounding the alarm, sending letter after letter to the federal finance department, asking them to quit. But it was only after news began spreading over the sub-prime meltdown south of the border, that these two decided they'd better cool it for a bit.

AIG didn't lose a dime, because Flaherty had already put up $200 billion Canadian tax dollars to make sure they didn't. But CMHC cried foul, our banks just cried, and Jimbo came to the rescue, buying the junk back so they could get them off the books before the mainstream media caught on. Too late though.

The cat was out of the bag.

So Steve and Jim went public, with "we're going to put a stop to this" and most in the media hailed them as heroes. Kinda like a bank robbery when one criminal helps to apprehend the others but still manages to make off with the dough.

And when they bought this junk back they tried to say it wasn't a "bank bailout", but that was, well ... a lie:

Harper called the recent CMHC deal "simply a market intervention ... to ensure our credit markets are functioning strongly." But Grinspun [York University political economist Ricardo] dismisses that interpretation: "Taxpayers are assuming risky assets and giving away safe ones." The problem, says Grinspun, is Harper and Flaherty haven't addressed the issues that exacerbated the crisis, including lack of transparency, greater deregulation and a philosophy the markets know best. (3)

A few people made a lot of money off our mini housing boom, and the only ones left with nothing but garbage, were the Canadian taxpayers. And can we withstand another meltdown with this toxic debt still on our books?

The new "cool off" of calming down the marks (us) is being helped along with millions of tax dollars going to sell us on the myth that this government piloted us through the recession. Unfortunately the ship is the Titanic and the iceberg may be just up ahead.

Previous:

1. It's Time to Have a Serious Conversation About Jim Flaherty and Goldman Sachs

2. Jim Flaherty, Goldman Sachs and the Foxes in the Henhouse

3. Jim Flaherty, Goldman Sachs and "The Swoop and Squat"

4. Jim Flaherty, Goldman Sachs and AIG Comes Calling

Sources:

1. Disaster in the Making: The Quiet Erosion of Canada’s Regulation System, By Trish Hennessy, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, February 22, 2011

2. Wall Street's Bailout Hustle, By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, February 17, 2010

3. Deficit not 'dirty' word experts warn Tories, By Linda Liebel, Toronto Star, October 27, 2008

Jim Flaherty and Goldman Sachs on Film: Part III

Jim Flaherty, Goldman Sachs and AIG Comes Calling

This is the 4th in my series on the relationship between Jim Flaherty and Goldman Sachs, and why it matters to Canadians. We have been lied to and this lie is a whopper.

Many of us have been sounding the alarm over our sub-prime mortgages and the massive Canadian bank bailout, but since the mainstream media just keeps playing along to get along, it has gone largely unnoticed. And any economists who bring up the issue are immediately vilified.

It is now common knowledge that Wall Street created the economic crisis, and that the two main players were AIG and Goldman Sachs. But what is not as evident is the fact that these same two players came knocking on Canada's door, when the heat over what amounted to a huge insurance fraud, was threatening to bring it to an abrupt end.

In early 2005, there were warnings by many, including financial expert and Yale University professor Robert Shiller, that the housing bubble might lead to a worldwide recession, given the massive amounts of mortgage-backed securities and other risky investments, that Wall Street was now up to their necks in.

In September of 2005, The Mortgage Insurance Companies of America sent a letter to the Federal Reserve, warning about 'risky lending practices' in US real estate and by the fall the housing market boom halted abruptly, and prices began to fall nationwide.

In May of 2006, subprime lender Ameriquest announced that it would cut 3,800 jobs and closed its 229 retail branches. Merit Financial Inc, based in Kirkland, Washington, filed for bankruptcy and closed its doors, firing all but 80 of its 410 employees.

Mark Carney, Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty all held onto the myth that no one saw this economic crisis coming, despite the fact that almost everyone did. They just didn't know what to do to stop it, because by the time the first rumblings of despair were heard, it was already too late.

With the American subprime industry drying up, Goldman Sachs needed fresh markets, and where better than Canada. They had a Republican and corporate friendly government in place, and no doubt knew of Flaherty's appetite for shady deals.

Goldman Sachs employee, Mark Carney, was the deputy finance minister who no doubt arranged all the necessary meetings, given his contact list, and he had already made a killing off Canadian taxpayers with his Income Trust fraud.

So on May 1, 2006, AIG registered as a lobbyist and the next day, Flaherty included in his first budget, a little gem. He announced that his government was opening up the market to more private insurers.

“These changes will result in greater choice and innovation in the market for mortgage insurance, benefiting consumers and promoting home ownership,” Mr. Flaherty said. The new rules encouraged the entry of such U.S. players as American International Group (AIG) ..."

The story of how the U.S. housing crisis spread to Canada is a tale of carefully orchestrated U.S. corporate lobbying, failed public-policy promises and government inaction to numerous private and public warnings about reckless mortgage practices.

Flaherty was willing to risk $200 billion of taxpayers money to get in the game.

And we have to remember that the crash in the United States was not the accident of reckless behaviour, it was reckless behaviour engineered so as to cause the accident. That was the only way that Goldman Sachs could clean up on the insurance, bankrupting AIG.

Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper knew that what they were doing was risky, and intentionally ignored expert advice. That's the way this game works. The sub-prime mortgages created a boom in our house prices and a handful of people got filthy rich. Or filthier richer.

They knew this was a gamble but it was one they were willing to take, because after all, the only losers would be the Canadian taxpayers and the unsuspecting pawns who bought homes they couldn't afford.

And with Canada's household debt the highest of the G-20, bankruptcies on the rise and small business defaults at a record high, we have yet to bear the brunt of this government's foolishness.

I suspect they will try to get an election over with before they have to face the music. They may even pull a Mike Harris and shorten the length of time for the campaign, which will work in their favour. We have to make sure that doesn't happen.

With a Harper majority we will have no place to go but down.

Previous:

1. It's Time to Have a Serious Conversation About Jim Flaherty and Goldman Sachs

2. Jim Flaherty, Goldman Sachs and the Foxes in the Henhouse

3. Jim Flaherty, Goldman Sachs and "The Swoop and Squat"

Jim Flaherty and Goldman Sachs on Film Part II

More to come.

Jim Flaherty, Goldman Sachs and "The Swoop and Squat"

The way that Goldman Sachs set up the American people, and eventually Canadians, was both clever and sinister. Matt Taibbi likened the scheme to the popular insurance scam known as the "swoop and squat". This is where there is a "mark" driver cut off by one perpetrator, while a second crashes into him. Then both of them collect on the insurance.

By now, most people who have followed the financial crisis know that the bailout of AIG was actually a bailout of AIG's "counterparties" — the big banks like Goldman to whom the insurance giant owed billions when it went belly up. What is less understood is that the bailout of AIG counter-parties like Goldman and Société Générale, a French bank, actually began before the collapse of AIG, before the Federal Reserve paid them so much as a dollar. Nor is it understood that these counterparties actually accelerated the wreck of AIG in what was, ironically, something very like the old insurance scam known as "Swoop and Squat," in which a target car is trapped between two perpetrator vehicles and wrecked, with the mark in the game being the target's insurance company — in this case, the government. (1)

At the height of the housing boom, Goldman Sachs was selling billions in bundled mortgage-backed securities, while also betting against those same securities. In other words they were going to have their cake and eat it too. Cashing in on one end and cashing out on the another, under a deregulation gold mine called the credit default swap.

The video below explains them better than I could, but basically what they were doing was buying insurance on your car and then hoping that you had an accident.

Goldman often "insured" some of this garbage with AIG, using a virtually unregulated form of pseudo-insurance called credit-default swaps. Thanks in large part to deregulation pushed by Bob Rubin, former chairman of Goldman, and Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, AIG wasn't required to actually have the capital to pay off the deals. As a result, banks like Goldman bought more than $440 billion worth of this bogus insurance from AIG, a huge blind bet that the taxpayer ended up having to eat. Thus, when the housing bubble went crazy, Goldman made money coming and going. They made money selling the crap mortgages, and they made money by collecting on the bogus insurance from AIG when the crap mortgages flopped. (1)

But Goldman and others were losing patience. There just weren't enough accidents, so they needed to find a way to accelerate the demise of the unsuspecting victims of a head on crash. Enter John Paulson:

Paulson had been looking for an opportunity to bet that the housing bubble would burst. There was enough information around about the shoddy nature of many of the subprime mortgage deals—with clients who had little in the way of assets, income, or employment—that a number of close observers realized a lot of homeowners" would soon be in dire straits, unable to meet their monthly payments. In the betting parlours of Wall Street, this represented a chance to make some serious money.The best vehicle for betting against the housing market,as Paulson and a few other Wall Streeters had figured out, was to take out "insurance" on packages of mortgages that had been bundled together and sold as a stock.

.... This "insurance"—known as a credit default swap (CDS)—was simply a bet. One frustration for Paulson was that there just weren't enough of these stocks, known as collateral debt obligations (CDO), to bet against. So he decided to become proactive. He approached a number of investment banks with the request that they create more CDOs to sell to clients, so that he could then take out insurance betting these would fail. The arrangement Paulson had in mind was rife with potential conflicts of interest. He clearly wanted to help pick the mortgages that would make up the new CDOs. And he would obviously favour particularly risky subprime mortgages, thereby increasing the likelihood that the CDOs would become worthless and he would be able to collect on the "insurance" he had taken out.

Bear Stearns, the giant investment bank where Paulson had once served as managing director, said no to his scheme. But Goldman Sachs agreed to the arrangement, providing Paulson with his dream opportunity: a chance to bet on toxic CDOs worth about $5 billion. (2)

In other words, Paulson was driving one of the perp cars, while Goldman Sachs steered the other into the path of the victim vehicle, AIG. You can see it coming, can't you?

So what does this have to do with us?

Well when they were trying to create a tidy bundle of toxic paper, they came knocking on our door, and we were ripe for the picking. Jim Flaherty was now our minister of finance and his deputy minister was Goldman Sachs employee, Mark Carney.

In the first half of this year [2008], as the sub-prime mortgage crisis was exploding in the United States, a contagion of U.S.-style lending practices quietly crossed the border and infected Canada's previously prudent mortgage regime. New mortgage borrowers signed up for an estimated $56-billion of risky 40-year mortgages, more than half of the total new mortgages approved by banks, trust companies and other lenders during that time ....

The doors had been opened wide two years before, when on May 1, 2006, AIG registered as a lobbyist and:

On May 2, 2006, in his first budget, Mr. Flaherty announced that not only would Ottawa guarantee the business of U.S. insurers, it was doubling the guarantee to $200-billion.

$200 billion dollars ripe for the picking and backed by the Canadian taxpayer. And not long after, Jim Flaherty allowed derivatives (credit default swaps) to infiltrate our sound financial system, starting with our Canada Pension Plan.

... the announcement this week that the CPP Investment Board, the team that manages Canadian Pension Plan investments, has been freed from restrictions that limited its use of derivatives gives us pause. The rule that has been repealed required that the board use derivatives only for purposes of hedging risk and that it hold other assets to back any derivative investment.

Warren Buffet, whose remarkable record as an investor made him the world's second-richest man and earned him the moniker Oracle of Omaha, once described derivatives as time bombs and "financial weapons of mass destruction."

"Ticking time bombs" and "financial weapons of mass destruction".

Can you see it coming? The Canadian taxpayer driving merrily along, with Mark Carney and Goldman Sachs in the car behind, and Jim Flaherty with AIG ready to cut us off?

This is the third in a series of how Jim Flaherty and Goldman Sachs have all but destroyed our banking system. Only taxpayer funded advertising is keeping Canadians in the dark, as they are led to believe that this government has had a steady hand on the wheel.

What they don't tell you is that the hand is on the wheel of the car about to crash into us.

Stay tuned and fasten your seat belts.

Previous:

1. It's Time to Have a Serious Conversation About Jim Flaherty and Goldman Sachs

2. Jim Flaherty, Goldman Sachs and the Foxes in the Henhouse

Sources:

1. Wall Street's Bailout Hustle, By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, February 17, 2010

2. The Trouble With Billionaires, By Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks, Viking Canada, 2010, ISBN: 978-670-06419-9, Pg. 93-99

3. Special investigation: How high-risk mortgages crept north, By Jacquie McNish and Greg MacArthur, Globe and Mail, December 12, 2008

Jim Flaherty and the Goldman Sachs Capers on Film

Telling the story in three minute or so segments. When done I'll put them all on a loop.

Jim Flaherty, Goldman Sachs and the Foxes in the Henhouse

When the Conservatives won the election in 2006 and Jim Flaherty was named the minister of finance, his choice for deputy minister raised a few eyebrows. Mark Carney was a high ranking executive from Goldman Sachs who was making millions of dollars a year. Why would he accept a position that paid a fraction of what he was used to making?

But at the time our attention was drawn to the undemocratic floor crossing of David Emerson and the subsequent drama on the hill.

As a result, the media barely gave it a passing glance. But this should have made headlines, and if not then, then at least now, in light of the mess that Goldman Sachs has made of the global economy. What was their interest in Canada?

Progressive journalists and bloggers have been sounding the alarm on Jim Flaherty's sub-prime mortgage fiasco, but no one in government or the MSM are touching it. I mentioned reading Matt Taibi's two articles in the Rolling Stone on Saturday, and it really put Canada's situation into perspective. I sat up half the night with open books scattered everywhere, and came to the conclusion that this is not simply about the gamble of high-risk mortgages. This is much deeper.

This is about Wall Street taking over this country's finances and setting us on a dangerous course. And as Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks reveal in their book: The Trouble With Billionaires, once they move in you never get them out.

... by the early 1990s, prodigies of Wall Street had effectively taken over government by being appointed to its top economic management positions. A virtual revolving door now connects the power corridors of Wall Street and Washington, with Goldman Sachs practically serving as a training school for those running the U.S. Treasury. Robert Rubin spent twenty-six years at Goldman Sachs, rising to co-chairman of the firm before becoming Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton; Henry Paulson, a one-time Goldman CEO, became George W. Bush's Treasury Secretary. (1)

And the result has been massive deregulation, allowing Wall Street to become the Las Vegas strip. And any attempt to reverse this has proven to be impossible.

This extraordinary political clout has enabled the wealthy few to effectively disable government when it comes to regulating financial markets. So when Brooksley Born, head of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, tried in the late 1990s to bring greater oversight to the wildly gyrating derivatives market, she was stopped in her tracks. It was almost a foregone conclusion that her efforts would be defeated, since she was opposed by the three most powerful government officials in the financial domain: Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt Jr., and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Significantly, these men had all earned their wealth via Wall Street and all were dedicated to the Wall Street creed of deregulation. (1)

Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper appear to have a very unhealthy infatuation with banks. I wonder if as part of role playing, they make their wives dress up as banks or bankers. But then I try not to wonder about things like that and turn my attention to pleasanter thoughts. Like a multi-car pile up.

But you can't escape this "good banks" phenomenon. It's everywhere. Canadian banks didn't fail because they were sound and regulated. But turns out this was only smoke and mirrors, because what Mark Carney has been doing, is deregulating Canada's financial sector.

We know that this new security perimeter deal is only for the benefit of multinational corporations, as globalization seeks to create a flat earth, with nothing in it's path. But Canada was a stumbling block because we had one of the safest banking systems in the world.

That's about to change. With a Wall Street guru now head of the Bank of Canada, our safeguards are being incrementally removed, that were once a barrier to foreign interests getting rich off the Canadian taxpayer.

Mark Carney started with taxing income trusts, that destroyed the life savings of many Canadian seniors, but netted $35 billion for Goldman Sachs' clients. He also removed the 15% tax on foreign investors, clearing the way for more takeover of Canadian assets. (2) In the 2010 budget, more tariffs were removed, costing taxpayers another $300 million a year, that will have to be absorbed by the working class.

The tariff elimination was by far the biggest move for corporate Canada ... [and] Despite the fiscal crunch, in which more than $160-billion will be added to the national debt by mid-decade, the federal government committed to follow through on cuts to corporate tax rates, to 15% by 2012. It would also establish a panel of MPs and businesspeople to look at repealing layers of red tape that might be adding unnecessary costs for companies. (3)

Translation for "repealing layers of red tape" - the removal of environmental protections.

Welcome to Wall Street.

The taxpayer funded ads about our economy are only creating a facade. Because behind the scenes, the boys are busy creating the perfect storm. A deregulated banking industry and an enormous amount of high-risk mortgages, now owned by us.

None of this was by accident, nor was it just a fleeting and dangerous whim. And I can prove it.

This is one in a series of articles on Jim Flaherty, his relationship with Goldman Sachs and why it might be too late to change the course they have put us on.

Sources:

1. The Trouble With Billionaires, By Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks, Viking Canada, 2010, ISBN: 978-670-06419-9, Pg. 65-66

2. Ottawa moves to eliminate tariffs, By Paul Vieira , Financial Post, March 4, 2010

3. Taxes and Avoiding Them on Everyone's Tongue, Toronto Sun, November 11, 2007