…where did all these money come from?

CEO bonus: $7.6 million
Market cap: $54.6 billion (Canada rank: 3)

Scotiabank is Canada’s third-largest financial institution by market cap, so perhaps it’s fitting that CEO Richard Waugh is also the country’s third highest-paid bank executive. Trailing two men you’ll read about later on this list, Waugh was only out-earned by 18 chief execs in 2009. More than 85 per cent of Waugh’s total pay ($8.7 million) that year, including $1.3 million in cash and $6.3 million in company shares and stock options, was awarded in the form of a bonus.

CEO bonus: $7.9 million
Market cap: $63.4 billion (Canada rank: 2)

In defending his massive annual bonus, Gordon Nixon needn’t point anywhere but his company’s stock chart. The RBC CEO took over the bank’s top spot in April of 2001, when the company’s share value had stagnated to around $14.25 per unit. After a decade running the bank, Nixon oversaw RBC’s stock rocketing to nearly $63 a share; it has since sunk back to about $44 per unit, though that’s still a 209 per cent increase from the valuation Nixon inherited ten years earlier. With a 2009 bonus of $7.9 million, all of which was awarded to the bank boss in company shares and stock options, Nixon was that year’s eighth highest-paid CEO in Canada.

CEO bonus: $11.9 million
Market cap: $63.7 billion (Canada rank: 1)

Like Gordon Nixon, the RBC chief executive who runs Canada’s second-largest company by market cap, TD CEO Ed Clark has overseen a meteoric rise in his bank’s stock value since taking the company’s top spot. In December of 2002, when Clark was appointed Toronto Dominion’s boss, the bank’s share price was listed around $21.65 per unit. Now, after peaking at $86.63 in April 2011, TD stock is worth about $70 per share, a jump of some 225 per cent in less than ten years. Clark, Canada’s fourth-highest paid CEO in 2009, received total compensation of $13.3 million that year, including $1.5 million in a cash bonus and nearly $10.5 million in bank shares and stock options.

Dr. Kuntz – pioneer or ?

How Canada’s Top Law Firms Used A Fraudulent Lawsuit To Destroy A Great Doctor and Line Their Pockets
In the history of mankind, great men, men of genius, men of great intelligence, men of great ability and great talent have often been attacked by lesser souls, by the incompetent, by the jealous, by the stupid, by the craven and the greedy who take more satisfaction in the destruction of their superiors than in their own success.

When Dr. John David Kuntz moved to British Columbia to take up the practice of medicine, after graduation from the University of Toronto, the local College of Physicians and Surgeons recommended that he set up shop in his speciality, orthopaedic surgery, in Kitimat, a remote small community, population 8,000, in north western British Columbia. The Vancouver market was already crowded with specialists who did not want more competition and, for Dr.Kuntz, who grew up in the remote northwestern Ontario community of Red Lake, the prospect of spending his working life, near or in “the bush”, as Canadians call their wilderness, was not at all unattractive.

Soon after he arrived in Kitimat, Dr. Kuntz came face to face with the grim reality of the industrial resource extraction economy of rural British Columbia in the form of crippled and injured young and middle aged men who had suffered spinal injuries while working.

Being a man of genius and talent, Dr. Kuntz quickly realized that what was keeping these otherwise healthy men from returning to an active life was the fact that the disks between the vertebrae in their backs had ruptured or collapsed and, at the time, there was nothing that surgery could do for them except a spinal fusion that left them relatively crippled. Dr. Kuntz put his mind to the problem and, using his native genius and god-given talents invented “spinal disk replacement surgery” at his clinic in Kitimat.

Soon afterwards, Dr. Kuntz was the leading orthopaedic surgeon in British Columbia, doing approximately 50 % of all of the spinal surgery in British Columbia from his medical practice in Kitimat. The success of Dr. Kuntz caused problems for two entrenched groups.

1. The other orthopaedic surgeons in British Columbia, especially in Vancouver, who saw their income levels dropping and patient base dwindling because of the genius in Kitimat.

2. The Workers Compensation system in British Columbia that was facing angry demands for a return of assessments from industrial employers whose workers had returned to work. The Workers Compensation system in British Columbia had become an insurance racket where employers of injured workers were fined with heavy up front assessments that were parsimoniously paid to injured workers as paltry monthly benefits. The incoming lump funds generated a huge cash reserve that supported a well paid, nepotistic, bureaucracy while injured workers and their families struggled to survive on minimum monthly support cheques.

Literally, Dr. Kuntz made the lame walk. He was a modern miracle worker, like Jesus, and, like Jesus, Dr. Kuntz was crucified by the lawyers and the judges – the Sanhedrin – not because he healed on the Sabbath but because he healed where others could not.

The adversaries of Dr. Kuntz consulted their lawyers, in Vancouver, and hatched a devious and diabolical plan to destroy Dr. Kuntz by using the College of Physicians and Surgeons to stop his work on the grounds it was “experimental medicine” and by launching a “fraudulent” class action lawsuit against him on behalf of 1,700 patients he had allegedly injured by his experimental surgery.

The plan worked. The medical profession, frightened by the prospect of insurance claims in the hundreds of millions of dollars, payable to some fictictious 1,700 patients, moved quickly to strip Dr. Kuntz of his licence to practice medicine notwithstanding the fact that Dr. Kuntz never treated 1,700 patients and that all, excepting a very few, patients, were living, very contentedly, with the surgery he had performed and many of his former patients signed a petition in support of Dr. Kuntz to help him keep his licence. There were two such petitions one with 5,000 signatures and another wiht 8,000 signatures.

When the insiders with the Vancouver legal establishment realized the success of their bold and diabolical plan against Dr. Kuntz they then turned their sights on an ever greater fraud against the public treasury by persuading a local politicial party, to promise, as part of their electoral platform, that their government would pay the mecical insurance fees of the doctors and, with this bold statement, the party won the support of the medical profession in British Columbia that was now saved form the prospect of huge medical insurance fees to cover the fraudulent claims against Dr. Kuntz and the support of a number of Canada’s leading law firms that made up the Canadian Medical Protective Association, CMPA, and who were set to benefit from the fraud based premiums to by collected from the taxpayers.

At this point, we have to explain to the reader that, in Canada, medical doctors do not pay insurance premiums for malpractice to a properly organized insurance company. Instead, they make regular payments to the CMPA, that describes itself as a “not-for-profit, mutual defence organization for physicians, by physicians” and is essentially an association made up of several large Canadian law firms that decide which claims to pay and which ones to resist.

The lawyers went laughing all the way to the bank, Dr. Kuntz was destroyed and reduced to poverty, every lawyer he hired to resist the fraud against him was disbarred, a series of crooked judges were inserted into every application he made to court to try to get a fair hearing and the fraudulent class action lawsuit against him was quietly dropped because there never were 1,700 injured patients.

How could this happen, you ask, in a democracy, like Canada, that boasts a competent, honest, justice system? Simple, the judges and lawyers in Canada conspired to deny Dr. Kuntz the basic right to cross examine and challenge his accusers. And, why did they do this, you ask? Simple, because they were all connected, in a multitude of ways, to the big law firms that benefited from the huge revenues that were now pouring into the CMPA.

http://drkuntz.blogspot.com/

http://www.ciws.ca/articles_bc_kuntz_wcb_justice4you.htm

Lawyers = Liars? License to print!



B.C. lawyers cashing in on taxpayers’ dime

By Jon Ferry, The ProvinceMarch 21, 2011

Province metro affairs columnist Jon Ferry

Photograph by: File photo, The Province

A burst pipe at my home last week reminded me how easy it is to pour water down the drain . . . or taxpayers’ money. The $6 million handed defence lawyers in the Basi-Virk trial is a prime example.

Here were two sleazy public servants who, with the help of highpriced lawyers, were able to play our justice system for years before finally pleading guilty last fall to corruption charges and getting the usual slap on the wrist.

As Attorney-General Barry Penner confirmed to me Friday, their legal bills, vetted by “a third party,” continued to be paid in instalments. The trickle became a torrent. Then, a couple of deputy ministers, apparently acting alone, decided it was futile even to try to claw back some of that cash.

Penner sums it up nicely: “The legal system has become very expensive, and it’s hard to comprehend some of the bills that have piled up.”

The A-G’s not kidding. The $6 million covered just the defence bills. Taxpayers also paid the prosecution lawyers. And the whole seven-year exercise, according to government figures released in January, cost the province $17.3 million . . . and counting.

It’s not just the Basi-Virk case. There were the Willie Pickton and Air India trials, during which tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars poured into lawyers’ bank accounts.

Gregory Thomas, B.C. director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, wonders why the Picktons of this world need $500-an-hour lawyers to defend them. He calls it an “obscene waste of public funds” that must be capped.

I agree with him. So, it seems, does Canada’s chief judge, Justice Beverley McLachlin, who last month deplored the fact that, with legal fees now averaging nearly $340 an hour, full representation was now out of the question for many Canadians.

Penner, who’s practised as a lawyer, said he understands people’s frustrations. But he noted that, in the Pickton and Air India cases, it was the courts who ruled the taxpayer had to “get out the chequebook for the lawyers’ fees.”

With Basi and Virk it was different, Penner said. The government agreed to pay their bills, apparently on the understanding they would repay them, if found guilty. When the guilty pleas came, however, it was concluded that, given Basi and Virk’s financial condition and the costs of collection, attempting to recoup any of that money simply wasn’t worth it.

Did the deputy ministers consult with their political masters? “Not that I’m aware of,” Penner said, adding he hopes in a couple of weeks to launch a review of the so-called legal indemnity policy for civil servants.

The B.C. Law Society, meanwhile, said a provincewide poll it conducted shows a “modest improvement” in the public’s opinion of lawyers.

But it also shows that, on a scale of one to 10, only 16 respondents rated lawyers between eight and 10 when it came to providing good value for money -and only 15 per cent did so over lawyers’ commitment to public service.

Given the rich and powerful monopoly that lawyers enjoy over legal services in B.C., it’s not hard to understand why.

 

Th3Uglytruth: We spend our lives teaching our children to do what is right…the real world seems to only reward those who can bend the truth!

Japan deserves what it got…..God says so!

Pondexter tweets illustrate bigger issue

By Mechelle Voepel
ESPN.com
Archive

Japan is facing a potential nuclear catastrophe, on top of the killer earthquake and tsunami that already have destroyed so much. It’s impossible to comprehend how anyone could look at what’s happening there and express anything but empathetic solidarity with these suffering people.

Yet, as you’ve probably heard, the New York Liberty’s Cappie Pondexter wrote a series of messages on Twitter over the weekend suggesting God might have intentionally afflicted Japan with these disasters. Then she speculated about what reasons the Almighty could have had for orchestrating such horrors.

 

Ray Amati/NBAE/Getty ImagesCappie Pondexter’s remarks were only part of the problem. The lack of, well, anything from the Liberty or WNBA was equally disconcerting.

Along with mindboggling insensitivity, Pondexter’s tweets appeared to apply a negative stereotype to an entire nation. Thus, she opened a door to a Twitter backlash against her remarks that has turned extremely ugly.  Ah, yes, good old Twitter. Now that technology has provided a “voice” to everyone with Internet access, we’ve found out just how much we don’t want to know what everyone is thinking.

Most of us represent an entity beyond just ourselves and must be cognizant of how our public words and actions might affect the company or team or school, etc., with which we’re affiliated. This can be a problem for people no matter what line of work they’re in.  Pondexter embarrassed herself, her Liberty team, the WNBA and Rutgers, her alma mater, with her tweets. She’ll have to deal with what perception people now have of her.

Of course, it has brought up the Don Imus incident in 2007, when his remarks about Rutgers’ women’s basketball team prompted a national discussion about racism, misogyny and rap/hip-hop lyrics, among other topics.  Pondexter wasn’t on that team, having finished her Rutgers career in 2006, but she did release a statement back then condemning Imus. Now, those words have been unearthed and thrown back at her.

Pondexter apologized via Twitter, although people might find her apology not entirely adequate. I don’t know if Pondexter will learn a valuable lesson from this — think, think, think before you tweet — or whether she’ll somehow erroneously convince herself she’s being victimized for her beliefs.

There’s never going to be a shortage of public figures saying things that get them in trouble. Again, especially with today’s technology, that is a macro problem. But we also can look at this Pondexter fallout in a micro perspective.

Last year, there was some controversy and confusion about why Pondexter, a 2008 Olympian, ended up not playing with the U.S. national team at the world championship. She had missed national team practices to attend Fashion Week in New York, but there was no real explanation of what was going on from USA Basketball. They essentially said, “Ask Cappie.”

I tried to arrange an interview with her, which never happened. She “explained” via Twitter, eventually, that she was tired and needed a break, so she chose not to play in the world championship.

Pondexter does charitable work and is not some awful person. She faced difficult circumstances growing up in Chicago and has achieved a lot. But she’s also shown a propensity for not always weighing the consequences of her words or actions, and now that’s really stung her.

When a player brings the league negative publicity, yes, it is that player’s responsibility alone. But the WNBA’s response shouldn’t be, “Well, let’s just let her dig her own way out of this Twitter mess by saying she’s sorry on Twitter, too.” Or, “If we don’t say anything or do anything about it, it will just go away.”

That’s not leadership, which is something the WNBA and the Liberty sorely seem to need.

Th3UglyTruth?  Racism is alive and well…

Interesting to note how “orderly” the Japanese are in dealing with the disaster…no looting, no shooting, no killing one another for food or anything else.  Maybe it is them that has a higher spiritual sense….

Banking ombudsman receives more than 1,000 complaints

Banking ombudsman receives more than 1,000 complaints in 2010 for first time

The Canadian Press, On Thursday March 10, 2011, 5:18 pm EST

By The Canadian Press

TORONTO – The number of consumer complaints about the financial industry handled in a single year by the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments has exceeded 1,000 for the first time since the office was established 15 years ago.

In its annual report for 2010 released Thursday, the ombudsman’s office said it opened 1,024 case files last year, an increase of 3.4 per cent over 2009.

That was a slower rate of growth than in 2009, when the number of cases filed grew by 48 per cent in the wake of the global financial crisis.

By sector, the number of banking cases opened in 2010 grew by 18.2 per cent to 462, while investment cases decreased by 6.2 per cent to 562.

“The fact that complaints have reached another new high demonstrates yet again that financial sector consumers need and deserve an impartial and effective alternative to the courts to consider complaints they have not been able to resolve with their firm,” said Ombudsman Doug Melville.

Complainants received compensation from their financial institution in 20 per cent of banking cases and 38 per cent of investment cases reviewed, for a total payout of $3.8 million.

Investment suitability, mortgage prepayment penalties, service issues and credit and debit card fraud were the most frequently cited complaint areas, the office said.

The ombudsman is an independent dispute resolution service for consumers and small businesses and deals with complaints they cannot get resolved in dealings with their bankers or investment firm.

Th3UglyTruth?  Guess who funds and pays the salary of this Office? Hmmmmmmm Follow the crumbs!

Guess who is raking in the bucks?

ORONTO (Reuters) – Bank of Montreal Chief Executive Bill Downe earned C$9.5 million ($9.8 million) in the bank’s fiscal 2010, a 28 percent raise from the previous year, as BMO’s profit rose and it made acquisitions in the wake of the financial crisis.

Downe earned a base salary of C$1.0 million last year, which actually was a decrease from his base salary of C$1.2 million in 2009, according to a regulatory filing.

But his cash bonus jumped 80 percent to C$2.9 million, and his stock-based compensation increased 20 percent to C$5.7 million.

Profit at BMO, Canada’s No. 4 bank, rose 57 percent to C$2.8 billion in 2010, up from C$1.8 billion in 2009, when the bank was stung by credit losses.

Toronto-Dominion Bank CEO Ed Clark’s pay rose 8 percent to C$11.3 million last year, while Royal Bank of Canada CEO Gordon Nixon earned C$11 million, up 5.8 percent from the previous year.

RBC and TD are Canada’s largest banks.

Since emerging from the crisis, BMO has begun making acquisitions as it seeks to increase its U.S. business. In December, it launched a $4.1 billion takeover bid for Wisconsin lender Marshall & Ilsley Corp.

The bank reports first-quarter 2011 results on Tuesday.

PROFIT ain’t a bad word…but when you lie to do it…why does society need morals?  They lied about the gravity of market disruption in order to justify their price and policy changes; are Canadians willfully ignorant?

Need more proof on who will profit?

Garry Marr, Financial Post · Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2011

It’s the first-time homebuyer who once again feels the pinch of new mortgage rules that restrict the amount one can borrow to buy a home.

“It’s a big thing reducing that amortization from 35 to 30 [years],” said Calgary mortgage broker Mark Herman of Mortgage Alliance about rules introduced by Ottawa that take affect in 60 days.

Amortization was as lengthy as 40 years in 2008 before the government first cracked down. It had been 25 years for decades before this housing boom.

Mr. Herman, who says about 85% of his clients use 35-year amortization, calculates that based on a five-year fixed rate of 3.99% someone who earns $50,000 a year with a $1,200 annual property tax bill and a $100 monthly heating bill will soon just qualify for a $238,620 mortgage as opposed to $257,451 today.

“If you are a first-time homebuyer you are going to qualify for 8% less house,” he said. “That 18 grand makes a big difference. It can be the difference between a great place or even no place.”

The government moves, which include restrictions on home-equity lines of credit and refinancing, are expected to give the housing market an immediate short-term boost as consumers scramble to borrow ahead of a March 18 deadline.

“You got a boost when the changes are introduced and then you get a lull afterwards,” said Pascal Gauthier, a senior economist with Toronto-Dominion Bank.

He suggests the changes to amortization will probably affect thousands of home sales, adding the deals may still get done but there will be an impact.

“They might look for a little bit less [house],” says Mr. Gauthier, “From our perspective, it doesn’t change things a whole lot. At the margin, it will weaken the market for first-timers.”

Another of the substantive changes that would allow consumers to refinance up to 85% of their home, down from 90%, will probably have a bigger impact on the condominium market, said Phil Soper, chief executive of Royal Le-Page Real Estate Services.

“The group hit most dramatically by these changes is the casual investor. These changes and the ones a year earlier have taken a lot of the potential out of the buy-and-flip [transaction],” said Mr. Soper, referring to rule changes in 2010 that forced condominium investors to have a minimum 20% down payment.

Read more: http://www.financialpost.com/personal-finance/Mortgage+changes+will+bite/4123270/story.html#ixzz1DVhdyM5u

And Guess who is raising their rates again?

Flaherty warns of even higher mortgage rates

OTTAWA – Interest rates are going up, and the federal finance minister says he expects them to rise even more.

The Royal Bank increased several of its posted and special mortgage rates on Tuesday, joining TD Bank and CIBC.

All three banks have increased the posted rate for a five-year closed mortgage by a quarter of a percentage point, to 5.44 per cent.

RBC also raised its special fixed rate offer for a five-year closed mortgage by the same percentage amount, to 4.39 per cent.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said he’s not surprised.

“The recent increase by a couple of the banks is exactly what we expected,” Flaherty told reporters in the foyer of the House of Commons.

And more increases should be coming, Flaherty predicted, since lending rates have been hovering close to historic lows.

“We’re likely to see higher interest rates as we go forward because interest rates are still very low.”

Flaherty commented as he denounced a Liberal opposition day motion calling on the Harper government to reverse a planned 1.5-percentage-point corporate tax cut.

Th3UGLYTruth? Guess who do you think has Flaherty on their Xmas list?  Guess who Flaherty “consulted” to change the mortgage rules?  With the change in rules and change in rates, guess who is holding the bag again? Exactly!!!  Guess what will happen after the summer?

DU for Feb 8, 2010

CZM, GTLS, MSB and NFLX also DU’d  but NFLX is over $50

And you think the sky was falling here in Canada?

Top 6 most indebted countries (and why)

by Michael Sanibel, Investopedia.com

The recent financial  crisis and recession have been a worldwide occurrence. The events in the United States since 2008 have garnered most of the headlines because the U. S. has the world’s largest economy and national debt, but the reality is that many countries in Europe are in worse financial shape and continue to deteriorate.

There are various ways to rank indebtedness, such as debt per capita and deficit or debt as a function of gross domestic product (GDP). This ranking is based on cumulative debt as a percentage of GDP and is limited to an analysis of the 25 largest economies. It is further limited to “external” debt, which is the portion of the national debt that is owed only to foreign creditors. The source for the debt and GDP amounts is the Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook most recent numbers from mid to late 2009.

1. Ireland – Debt/GDP: 997%
The days of Ireland enjoying one of the fastest growing economies in Europe are over, at least for now. The story is all too familiar, as easy credit fueled a housing bubble that burst and damaged consumer confidence.

After recording budget surpluses in the prior two years, the economy reversed course in 2009 and contracted 7%. This eroded tax revenues and sent the annual deficit to a record 14.3% of GDP. The European Union set a target for Ireland to reduce that figure to 3% by 2014, but the International Monetary Fund has indicated that the deadline will be missed. Moody’s has subsequently lowered its bond rating.

2. Netherlands – Debt/GDP: 467%
The national debt in the Netherlands has reached record levels as a result of the world financial crisis and recession. Much of the added burden was caused by significant government support for the country’s banking sector. The increase in debt per capita is second only to that experienced in Ireland.

The Netherlands joined the eurozone with a hard guilder a decade ago, but its current debt would likely disqualify it for membership.

3. United Kingdom – Debt/GDP: 409%
Investment bank Morgan Stanley fears that Great Britain could face a severe debt crisis in the near future if it continues down its current path. According to the bank’s report, this is a case of not putting aside sufficient reserves when the economy was sound. During the peak of the boom, it still ran a budget deficit of 3% of GDP when other European countries were running surpluses exceeding 2%.

Like many other countries, Britain bought time during the financial crisis by implementing massive fiscal stimulus and forcing the public to fund losses in the private sector. Without the restoration of fiscal credibility, there is a significant danger of a government bond sell-off, pound weakness and a flight of capital.

4. Switzerland – Debt/GDP: 273%
Generally regarded as having one of the world’s most stable economies, Switzerland has taken its budget crisis seriously. When the national debt began to escalate in the last decade, the Swiss voted to approve a constitutional amendment forcing the government to balance expenses and revenue during each economic cycle. While annual deficits may still occur, this has instilled discipline in the process and lowered the country’s borrowing costs as investors rushed to safety.

This so-called “debt brake” was implemented in response to increasing debt stemming from a slowdown in economic growth. Deficits climbed as spending rose for unemployment benefits and tax revenues declined. While government expenditures were cut across the board, rising revenues have not been sufficient to pay down the incurred debt.

5. Portugal – Debt/GDP: 228%
With last year’s deficit coming in at 9.4% of GDP, the Portuguese government has instituted a growth and austerity program with the objective of reducing that number to 2.8% by 2013. These measures have sparked strikes in the public sector including postal and transportation services. Those events have been further propelled by unemployment above 10%, the worst in 40 years.

The root problem has been low productivity and virtually no economic growth in the past few years. Portugal ranks last in GDP growth among countries that adopted the euro as a common currency. Demand for goods and services has stalled, along with innovation and business momentum. In addition, Portugal’s exports have been undercut by cheap labor in countries such as China. (For related reading, see The Economics Of Labor Mobility.)

6. Austria – Debt/GDP: 214%
The recession and government assistance to banks have contributed to the budget crisis in Austria. The finance minister has rejected the notion of higher taxes in favor of administrative reforms to cut spending. He has predicted that the annual deficit would grow from 3.5% to 4.7% of GDP between 2010 and 2012 before starting to decline. That peak would be the third-highest since 1976 when such data were first recorded.

Rising unemployment has resulted in increased expenditures for unemployment compensation and other government benefits. In addition to the reduced payrolls, tax reforms have driven down overall tax revenues.

The Bottom Line
While the U.S. and Canada have large economies, their respective debt-to-GDP ratios are 93% and 62%. The U.S. gets most of the attention because of the size of the numbers that comprise the ratio – $13.5 trillion debt (June 2009) and $14.4 trillion GDP (2009 estimate).

By comparison, China and India have ratios of 7% and 20% respectively. Their economic growth rates have also exceeded the western nations over the past few years, thereby keeping their debt ratios relatively low. If the western nations don’t implement policies to reduce their debts, they run the risk of jeopardizing future economic growth and prosperity (Th3UgltyTRUTH: this has been going on for the past 30 years!)