ARE YOUR RRSP’s SAFE?

Click on the link above to hear Part 2 of my series on Stephen Harper and The Canadian Banking System. Please also read the accompanying text.

No, not really. Not in today’s bail-in banking rules. But first, in last week’s post I said that anything over ten thousand dollars in a Canadian bank account could now be prey to confiscation by the banks in case of an international bank melt down under the new “bail-in” rules. I was reminded by viewers that the Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation insures deposits up to one hundred thousand dollars. So the feeling of many is that any Canadian depositor can feel secure if their bank accounts are under the one hundred thousand limit of insured deposits. Right? Well, that depends.

On April 3, 2013 on CBC Neil Macdonald, as Senior Washington Correspondent for the CBC report, said “It boils down to this: Ottawa is contemplating the possibility of a Canadian bank failure-and the same sort of pitiless prescription that was imposed on Cypress…while officials in Ottawa are playing down the possibility of a raid on the bank accounts of ordinary Canadians, they chose not to include that guarantee in the budget language”. Let’s think about that for a moment. Ottawa chose not to include that guarantee in the budget language. And then Mr. Macdonald goes on to explain that: “as the Cypress meltdown proceeded (2013) it became clear that Europe’s finance ministers and
central banks, encouraged by the International Monetary Fund, were not only willing to freeze and seize uninsured deposits over 100 thousand euros, they were also initially willing to cancel deposit insurance and go after small deposits, too.

In the end the plan was rewritten and insured deposits were protected, but the signal had been sent. The Europeans and the IMF had been prepared to do the unthinkable. That is to cancel any insurance plans for under one hundred thousand euros and to go after the smaller deposits, too. And we are reminded that Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, was prepared to seize a portion of all deposits in Cypress, insured and uninsured. So was the European Central Bank, and so were Europe’s
finance ministers. Collectively they were like ducks on the backs of unsuspecting June bugs. But in this same CBC report, Macdonald tells us about a speech given by departing central banker Mark Karney who supported such a system (bail-in) and then of remarks by Craig Alexander, chief economist at TD Canada Trust who says that “this kind of a system would make the banks stronger” and then added: “he also notes that many Canadians believe, mistakenly, that their RRSPs and other holdings are safe and insured, up to the one hundred thousand dollar threshold. They don’t realize that government bonds as well as stocks and mutual funds are among the investments that don’t
qualify for CDIC”.

This to me is truly shocking that RRSP’s are not insured by the Canadian government. I think it might shock a lot of other Canadians, too, many who are banking these RRSPs and banking on them for future security. But you know, this raises a much larger question in my mind… Why do all these provisions that are so grossly unfair to everybody but the banking system and those in finance who stand to profit from a banking meltdown, seem to suggest that a banking crisis might be imminent, one worse than the last one? Otherwise why would the international banks all be huddling together legalizing the right of western and European banks to seize depositor’s money in case their
stupid greed causes another massive banking failure?

Sometimes I’m accused of seeing connections where none may exist, but human society is in nature, so to speak, and it evolves like nature, and in nature everything is connected. I don’t like to think this, but I think it nevertheless…that there may also be a direct connection between a sooner rather than later bank melt-down and so many of Harper’s top people jumping ship and refusing to run in the upcoming election. Could they all be trying to escape an ugly, ugly bank melt down on their watch? Especially with Greece in the throes of a melt-down? More on these connections next time.

Stephen Harper and The Canadian Banking System

Harper’s
Ultimate Treachery…your bank account

Please clink on the link above to view my new video blog mini-series.  Also please read accompanying text.

Have you
been listening to any of the internet chatter out there about the major banks
operating in Canada and the new “bail-in” rules?  And just what are the new banking “bail-in” rules compared to the old banking “bail-out” rules?  Well, it seems the new “bail-in” rules have the same purpose as the “bail-out” rules” that is, to make the tax payers pay for the horrific mistakes (i.e. greed) of our private banking system operators but with a new, more direct twist.  Instead of western governments using taxpayers’ money already collected to give it to the banks as in bail-outs, the new bail-in rules will just take it directly out of customers’ bank accounts and pension funds if banks and governments find this to be necessary to stabilize any of the big banks in Canada who get into trouble.  What?  Can the big banks really do this?

Well, they did it in Cypress.  Remember the banking crisis in Cypress in 2013 when taxpayer funds weren’t sufficient to deal with the situation?  When the Cypress government just allowed the banks to take what they needed out of citizen’s savings accounts? And guess what.  Stephen
Harper has already created the Canadian equivalent of the Cypress “bail- in” provisions by granting the same option to major banks operating in Canada if and when their greed and frenetic love of risk outstrips their immediate banking resources.  These provisions have been written into the Canadian government’s new banking rules called “Economic Action Plan 2013”  ( pages 144, 145).

On July 8^th, 2014 CBC News reported that the “Investor ratings service Moody’s has changed its outlook for Canada’s biggest banks from
stable to negative, citing  concerns over the Canadian’s government’s plan
to implement a “bail-in” system in the event of a bank failure.”  So, here we are in Canada, with our government and banks boasting of how wonderful our banking system is when in reality our banks are rated “negative” by Moody’s.  And Moody’s senior vice-president David Beattie, author of the report, said “he believed the risk of a bank failure (in Canada) was
remote, but was concerned about the trend of governments worldwide to provide for bail-in measures, instead of the bailouts seen in 2008.”

Are bail-ins actually becoming a worldwide phenomenon at least in Western and European banking?  No way, how could it be possible that banks internationally think they have the right to simply dip into their customer’s deposits when they feel the need as they did in Cypress?  It can’t be true.  But it is.  And furthermore this unthinkable, even unspeakable banking form of highway robbery of innocents has now been agreed to by the international G20 leaders of the world. 

As Ellen Brown wrote for the Huff Post Business on 01/31/2015 “On the weekend of November 16^th (2014) the G20 leaders were whisked into Brisbane, posed for their photo ops, approved some proposals, made a show of roundly disapproving of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and whisked out again.  It was all so fast, they may not have known what they were endorsing when they rubber stamped the Financial Stability Board’s “Adequacy of Loss Absorbing Capacity of Global Systemically Important Banks in Resolution”, which completely changes the rules of banking.”   

  
Russell Napier of Zero Hedge called it “the day money died”.  

Well, we know for sure that Stephen Harper knew exactly what he was signing in Brisbane because the same provisions had already been written into the Conservative budget in 2013 in Canada. Of course all Harper talked about at the meeting was what a threat Putin was to all of civilization and how Canada needed to get out into the war zones to prove what a powerful counter threat Canada could be to Russia and ISIS.  I don’t think either are shaking in their boots from Harper’s sword rattling but I think we should be shaking in ours, but from fear of what Stephen Harper and the banks together have lain the ground work for which is a massive theft of the people’s private deposits and pension funds.   

More later.