With most mutal funds and RRSP investments going nowhere these days you should consider getting into DRIP’s or SPP’s. Here is a link to a great list of Canadian DRIP’s and SPP’s.
I plan to write a more detailed article in the future regarding how these two investment vehicles have done in the past few years.
This is a huge 1600 km pipeline that was not supposed to be ready until this July. The Canadian oil giant Suncor has agreed to use this pipeline to ship oil from the Alberta oilsands to Wisconsin.
Despite what anyone in the media says, Canada is a major exporter of oil to the US. Currently The US imports almost twice as much oil from Canada then the next country on the list. See for yourself.
US Crude Oil and Total Petroleum Imports Top 15 Countries
Enbridge’s Alberta Clipper pipeline set to come into service ahead of schedule – Winnipeg Free Press
Interesting post on moneyourmoney.info suggesting people move their money from the large banks to the local ones. Sites like this are popping up all around the web promoting small local businesses as a better option than large multi-national corporations. A local bank is never too big to fail nor can they get away with paying their employees large bonuses. Ideas like this promote a more stable and healthy economy.
People all over the country are choosing to move their money out of bigger banks and into smaller, community-oriented financial institutions that generally avoided the reckless investments and schemes that helped cause the financial crisis. Fueled by the personal initiatives of thousands, it’s a grassroots effort that has the potential to shift power in the financial system away from Wall Street and to Main Street. Check out the video, read up on what inspired the idea, connect with others through Facebook and Twitter and then use thetools and links provided to find a community bank or credit union in your area.Move Your Money
The below is a link to the Transparency International Consumer Perceptions Index for 2009. This list ranks how corrupt countries are perceived according to a list of surveys. Interesting to note that New Zealand is the least corrupt and Somalia is perceived as the most corrupt.
http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2009/cpi_2009_table
Below is a piece of an article I found on noagendanews.com that discusses how the US Federal Reserve financed roughly 80% of US debt in 2009. This number is so high mainly because the US debt has grown substantially in 2009 and fewer countries are willing to service this debt for obvious reasons. But the real question is “Where does the Federal Reserve get the money from?”. The answer is “They make it out of thin air!”. Think about that for a while…
Provided the Fed actually reveals their true accounting practices it will be interesting to see where this money came from when bill HR 1207 is passed this year.
Here’s the problem that the U.S. Fed’s “exit” poses in simple English: Our fiscal 2009 deficit totaled nearly 12% of GDP and required over $1.5 trillion of new debt to finance it. The Chinese bought a little ($100 billion) of that, other sovereign wealth funds bought some more, but as shown in Chart 2, foreign investors as a group bought only 20% of the total – perhaps $300 billion or so. The balance over the past 12 months was substantially purchased by the Federal Reserve. Of course they purchased more 30-year Agency mortgages than Treasuries, but PIMCO and others sold them those mortgages and bought – you guessed it – Treasuries with the proceeds. The conclusion of this fairytale is that the government got to run up a 1.5 trillion dollar deficit, didn’t have to sell much of it to private investors, and lived happily ever – ever – well, not ever after, but certainly in 2009. Now, however, the Fed tells us that they’re “fed up,” or that they think the economy is strong enough for them to gracefully “exit,” or that they’re confident that private investors are capable of absorbing the balance. Not likely.
My last post titled “Nightmare Before Christmas” may have been a bit premature. On Christmas Eve the US government decided to lift the 400 billion dollar cap it previously thought was enough to cover the Freddie and Fanny screw ups. Of course this was not really mentioned in the mainstream media and pretty much ignored since it was so close to the holidays. I find it funny and sad that a country that praises its Capitalist ways must continue to fork up tax payers money to bail out large corporations. Just like any parent knows, without rules and structure a kid will mis behave until they are forced to suffer some consequences. Yet Fannie and Freddie can continue to make bad decisions knowing the government will always be there to bail them out. In a real capitalist economy companies go bankrupt when bad decisions are made. This is how the system separates the good from the bad.
References:
A recent podcast by money manager Andrew Horowitz’s contains an interview with G. Edward Griffin how wrote the book The Creature From Jekyll Island: A Second Look At the Federal Reserve
This is a great video blog that Peter Schiff posts randomly through out the week. This particular post talks about the Health Care Bill and the upcoming congressional hearings regarding the economic collapse.
Over night the North Korean government froze all currency which essentially shut down businesses for the day. Their currency the “WON”, was devalued by the government by a ratio of 100:1. Citizens were then asked to turn in their old currency for the new WON with a cap of 100,000 WON per family. This wiped out any savings a family may have had making them poor overnight.
The central bank in Australia raised interest rates by a quarter percent for the past three straight months. This is generally done to contain inflation and slow economic growth. This country looks to be headed in the right direction as opposed to the near zero interest rates in North America and Europe.
There may be pressure on the US Congress to scale back this law. This was brought into power in 2002 after the Enron and Worldcom accounting fraud. This law has been accused of stifling American business and causing the recent lack of IPO’s.
John and Andrew talking about the latest week in the markets and the Dubai debt problem. The Dubai problem was over reported in my opinion. It was first stated that Dubai World was asking for more time to make their upcoming 69 billion debt payment but it later ended up being only 25 billion. I know by today’s standard this seems quite small and it actually is, especially when you have other Emirate countries willing to help out Dubai.
