Ed and Ted’s Adventures
Recent news revealed a world renowned institution caught “protecting itself”, instead of “protecting its victims”. I see identical hubris with our premier and finance minister.
Over one billion dollars of Albertan’s money is missing in toxic investments. Two western Canadians are dead by suicide. You would think that Ted and Ed would be honest with the public, but no. They act similar to how my two year old nephew does when he has a bathroom “accident”. First try to hide it. Then deny it. Then perhaps put on an angry face of indignation. This forgiveable behavior for a two year old, but for Ted and Ed? It seems evident of persons who should not be in leadership nor trusted with money.
For those who are out of the loop, this investment paper turned out to be junk that was sold by investment salesmen, and the assets were then pledged to foreign banks (Deutsche bank in our case), in a complicated insurance process called a credit default swap. Not many people know or care what a credit default swap is, but imagine if you and your friends could buy insurance on your neighbors home. Then imagine if someone were to burn that home so that you and your friends could collect the insurance money. Apply that pathology to finance and you know the basics and the dangers of credit default swaps. They can be financial weapons of mass destruction.
$32 million of city tax revenues were lost in these by our city treasurer. Another billion or so from other Albertan’s.
Ed and Ted’s excellent financial regulators gave investment firms permission to sell this toxic junk in Alberta. It granted them permission to violate Alberta Securities Laws to do so. It has given several thousand such permissions without a single notice to the public. And neither Ed nor Ted is willing to tell us why. After all it is only billions of your money. Ted has not lost a nickel so why should he care? Ted now informs me that he will not answer this question of “why”. Nor will he tell why secret deals like this are done without any public notice. An accident Ted? Hiding something from the public?
Contact the writer at lelford@shaw.ca if you would like to become part of the solution.
Larry Elford
