Financial crime more than every other crime combined?

[admin]

the FBI has adopted the narrow approach, defining white-collar crime as

"those illegal acts which are characterized by deceit, concealment, or violation of trust and which are not dependent upon the application or threat of physical force or violence"

(1989, 3). While the true extent and cost of white-collar crime are unknown, the FBI and the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimate the annual cost to the United States to fall between $300 and $660 billion.


https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/white-collar-crime
http://www.acfe.com/
Friedrichs, David O. (2009). Trusted Criminals: White Collar Crime In Contemporary Society (4 ed.). Wadsworth Publishing. p. 50. ISBN 978-0495600824. citing Kane and Wall, 2006, p. 5

(it must be noted that the bill to bail out the economy, from collapse in 2008 was what.....trillions when all were added up?)

How illegal schemes were used to pad Wells Fargo’s profits
BY JEREMY BAGOTT
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A report issued last week by Wells Fargo is no bodice-ripper, but it does have moments of guile, intrigue and betrayal to match the seediest pulp fiction.

Nearly a third of the fraud described in the report was concentrated in California, which, when the bad behavior began, was still reeling from earlier actions of a different set of rogue bankers whose practices led to a host of problem from the subprime loan meltdown and taxpayer bailouts to the mortgage default crisis for which the Northern San Joaquin Valley was ground zero in 2008.

The 110-page volume, commissioned by the bank’s board of directors, is part of an apology tour the bank has been conducting since late last year. Wells now seeks to be the “transparent bank.”

ADVERTISING

The report attempts to explain how managers at a Big Four bank could have cultivated thousands of dishonest underlings who then created as many as 2 million bogus accounts and engaged in other chicanery. Branch personnel at Wells Fargo have been accused of preying on non-English speakers, young adults and the elderly. It also hoodwinked other pitifully gullible members of society like professional investment managers and writers of popular business management books.

The report whitewashes some of the abuses.

For example, it describes a practice of wiring money in and out of accounts without the knowledge of depositors as “simulated funding.” Less kindly observers might call it wire fraud.

The report also references employees “opening unauthorized accounts” to pocket bonuses. Here, too, less kindly observers might be tempted to call the practice identity theft.

The report paints a picture of fraudsters ravaging the bank like a plague of locusts.

We meet John Stumpf, Wells Fargo’s former chairman and chief executive officer; and Carrie Tolstedt, a bespectacled former senior banking executive. Both shoulder much of the blame in the pages of the report. The bank’s board is now trying to claw back millions in bonuses promised to the two, though it’s unlikely either will have to pay back the millions already paid them over many years as a result of the institutionalized petty larceny.

Before the revelations, Wells was known for its skill in cross-selling all manner of accounts, services, credit cards and mortgages. In 2009, it claimed it had reached a point of getting each retail customer to subscribe to an average of nearly six Wells Fargo products. That claim now seems fishy.

In 2009, America was more than a year into the Great Recession. People were upset with their banks. No one had much brand loyalty. It’s just not believable.

The report finds the fraud disproportionately affected California, Arizona and Florida – states heavily hit by the subprime meltdown. At Wells, the Golden State had the highest number of sales practice-related allegations (27.9 percent of the total) and terminations coupled with resignations (28.2 percent of the total).

The report is silent on the role junk fees have come to play in banking since the end of the Great Recession.

As a result of Dodd-Frank reforms and unresolved problems with Fannie and Freddie, fees have increasingly become the raison d’être of big banks as lending becomes more problematic. In 2016. three of America’s biggest banks – JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo – are getting rich on fees. They raked in more than $6.4 billion from ATM and overdraft fees, according to an analysis by CNNMoney and S&P Global Market Intelligence.

That’s up almost $300 million from the previous year.

Meanwhile, a wave of investigations continues. In March, the Wells Fargo reached a $110 million settlement over the creation of the fake accounts. Though the accounts were fake, the fees they generated on unsuspecting depositors were all too real.

Moreover, the fraud cost ordinary people countless hours trying to identify and unwind accounts.

Wells Fargo ended up firing 5,300 employees (averaging as many as 377 fake accounts each) and launched its mea culpa tour.

In the background, U.S. banks push for more ebanking, incentivize direct-deposit programs and would like to eliminate legal tender from transactions wherever possible. In places like Sweden, this is happening.

From 2005 to 2015, the total value of ATM withdrawals in Sweden fell by 47 percent. During the same period, card payments increased by about 50 percent. One statistic shows that cash transactions made up barely 2 percent of the value of all payments in that country in 2015.

In a government study in the U.K., researchers found cash was only the second-biggest threat for criminal activities like money laundering. The bigger threat, according to researchers, was the banks themselves.

Jeremy Bagott, a former journalist, writes about finance and land-use issues in the state. He wrote this for The Modesto Bee.

Read more here: http://www.modbee.com/opinion/article14 ... rylink=cpy

[admin]

Meanwhile, in measurements of systemic financial harvesting of American investors and consumers.....here are some early data musings to try and compile the non-academic report comparing the financial cost of all ‘ordinary’, verses the financial cost of those done by the financial sector

Thanks to all who contribute to this report by sending in examples, with a source-link so they can be added to the tally.

The research question is this: “How does the cost of systemic financial and investment industry failures or wrongdoing, compare to the economic harm done by the ‘ordinary’ crime in America....comparison of crime/harm done by ‘trusted’ perpetrators of harm, verses ‘non-trusted’ perpetrators of harm.

People who we tend to trust, as compared to those whom we do not trust.....who does more financial damage to America?

Going back about as far as I recall, I bring up the 1995, December 6, story “Orange Country Marks a Grim Anniversary” Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper. (sources listed include Associated Press, Santa Ana, Calif)

Orange County, Ca south bankruptcy do the the kind of help one gets from an unregulated, "honour system" of financial games playing.

The treasurer of Orange County managed to ‘erase’ $1.7 billion of the $7.5 billion entrusted to him. I would ascribe a great deal of his ability to erase this much money to the ‘help’ and guidance that he may have received from a Wall Street advice giver...while a survey in the TIMES ORANGE COUNTY at the time read thusly: "Poll: Poverty seen as a sign of personal weakness”.

It is now 20 some years later and I think the world is coming to terms with the probability that poverty might be a sign of unchecked economic criminality, and not a sign of weakness. That is my view in 2017.




To be continued...work in progress....any good sources/examples (with a link) sent to visualinvestigations@shaw.ca, and thank you for helping flesh out this issue.

[admin]

From AnT in Toronto, financial expert and industry analyst:

Re: Securities Commissions protecting investors, or....another agenda? (my paraphrasing)

“ Or whether the FCAC’s mandate of ensuring that Canadian financial institutions act in their best interest has to be rethought for the modern era.”

Where does the best interests statement come from. I thought it was just to “to protect the interests of customers”

Current regulations allow advisors to earn more on some products than others.

One thing that has become increasingly clear to me over the years is that all these regulations that are supposedly there to protect investors actually operate as carve outs from common law. Under agency law an advisor acting under instruction to buy a security would not be allowed to sell you a product that is more expensive than another because he gets paid more for doing so; he would owe a duty of loyalty to the principal and not to the third party to do otherwise.

At present there are no material regulatory or common law protections for advice.

Current regulations allow advisors to earn more on some products than others. The present best interest standard proposals via the CSA Consult appear to me to be attempting to right this carve out in an attempt to prevent advisors from recommending higher cost similar products – this is a best product standard and conforms to agency law with respect to duties of loyalty and performance. It is not a best interest standard for advice.

These carve outs will weaken attempts by individuals to take complaints to court

All a fiduciary standard is, is a common law duty, and in the case of advice, this common law duty is applied to advice. Securities Acts allowed this carve out in the US in 1940 and Canadian Securities Law is drawn from this root. At present there are no material regulatory or common law protections for advice. Suitability is a half way house, a recognition that advice is being provided, that the typical agency relationship of instruction is actually one that includes advice but that regulation of the transaction on its own omits important liabilities associated with this non regulated duty.



The Statutory Best Interest Standard (SBIS) from the expert committee appears to be a best interest standard applied to advice with carve outs from common law that weaken the duties and obligations of the fiduciary duty. The expert committee should provide an explanation as to what the carve outs are exactly. Its standard complements the CSA proposed standard in that it deals with different duties: one is the best product, the other the best advice. But the SBIS, as I said, has critical carve outs that would not be allowed at common law. These carve outs will weaken attempts by individuals to take complaints to court in that a determination has already been made, at a statutory level, that the duty to advice in a client’s best interests is not a fiduciary duty as such and not deserving of its protection.

An

[admin]

4% cost to investors in the U.S., and 3.8% "haircut to Canadians"

(the cost per year of conflicted, high fee financial advice from some sources)

This compilation of info from two of Canada's top investment academics and professionals, with decades of experience is well worth reading in my opinion.

It looks at mostly Canada, with a bit of commentary about the costs of biased financial advice in the U.S. as well, from studies quoted in this report.

Enjoy.


P.O. BOX 85 COMMERCE COURT WEST TORONTO, CANADA M5L 1 B9
ewaitzergstikeman.com (416) 869-5587
September 8, 2016
Alberta Securities Commission
Autorite des marches financiers
British Columbia Securities Commission
The Manitoba Securities Commission
Financial and Consumer Services Commission (New Brunswick) Nova Scotia Securities Commission
Ontario Securities Commission
Financial and Consumer Affairs Authority of Sasktachewan
c/ o Josee Turcotte, Secretary Ontario Securities Commission 20 Queen St. W., 22nd Floor Toronto, ON M5H 3S8

and

c/o Ms Anne-Marie Beaudoin, Corporate Secretary Autorite des marches financiers
800 rue de Square-Victoria, 22e etage
C.P. 246, tour de las Bourse
Montreal, Quebec H4Z 1G3
Re: CSA Consultation Paper 33 -404
Please find enclosed our comments made in response to CSA Consultation Paper 33-404. The comments are solely in our personal capacity.
SUITE 5300
Please feel free to follow-up with either of us. Ed Waitzer can be reached at ewaitzer@stikeman.com . Keith Ambachtsheer can be reached at keith@kpa-advisory.com .

Keith Ambachtsheer


SUBMISSION TO THE CANADIAN SECURITIES ADMINISTRATORS

Date: September 9, 2016
To: The Canadian Securities Administrators
From: Keith Ambachtsheer and Ed Waitzer

RE: CSA CONSULTATION PAPER 33-404 – PROPOSALS TO ENHANCE THE OBLIGATIONS OF ADVISORS, DEALERS, AND REPRESENTATIVES TOWARDS THEIR CLIENTS

Thank you for the opportunity to submit our views on this important topic.

We see the CSA’s initiative as requesting guidance to create and implement measures that will achieve better financial outcomes for the clients of Canada’s retail investment advice and management industry.

As two individuals who have studied this question from both academic and professional perspectives for multiple decades, we believe we are well-placed to respond and contribute to the CSA’s request.

A Time to Act

In 1994, the Ontario Securities Commission asked Commissioner Stromberg to undertake a review of regulatory issues facing the then rapidly growing investment fund industry. Her report, released in January 1995, highlighted inherent conflicts of interest with respect to the structuring and management of investment funds and the distribution of securities generally – all resulting in the interests of clients not being placed first. She also noted the inadequacy of the training and proficiency of many of those who sell and manage investment funds. Her proposals addressed these conflicts of interests and proficiency gaps.

a strong financial services sector depends on public trust.

With the passage of over twenty years, the significance of the issues highlighted in the Stromberg report now have systemic implications. For one, a strong financial services sector depends on public trust. This has been seriously eroded and is unlikely to be restored (or a sound regulatory framework built) unless investors are entitled to expect that the financial professionals they rely upon are proficient and will be held accountable to a uniform best interest standard. As importantly, the lack of workplace pension coverage for the majority of Canadian workers, coupled with the ongoing transfer of wealth from savers to the financial sector through high investment fees, have become challenges to the adequacy of retirement income savings. The time has come to act, rather than continue to kick the can down the road.

Separately and together, we have published a series of articles and studies on the question over time. The most recent (a copy of which is attached) is our article “Our investment advisers’ moral compasses are still being aligned” in the August 16, 2016 edition of the Globe & Mail. Bios can be found appended to this submission.

Simple logic predicts that when retail investors are advised by people with conflicting interests and limited competencies, poor financial outcomes will result.

Poor Financial Outcomes

Simple logic predicts that when retail investors are advised by people with conflicting interests and limited competencies, poor financial outcomes will result. There is considerable evidence that this is in fact the case. For example, in a recent Financial Analysts Journal article, Jack Bogle reports a - 4%/yr. average underperformance relative to the market for U.S. mutual fund investors for the 15- year period ending June 30, 2013.

A new paper by researchers from the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and Western University sheds important light on the ‘value-of-financial- advice’ question in a Canadian context.iii Their study compared the investment behavior and results of a large sample of Canadian mutual fund investors and those of the people who advise them. The researchers found that while conflicts of interest do appear to impact the behavior of some advisers, there is a bigger problem.

However, their own investment results were, on average, worse than their clients’.

They found that in most cases, there was a strong correlation between how advisers advised their clients to invest, and how they invested themselves. However, their own investment results were, on average, worse than their clients’. While their clients underperformed their passive benchmarks by an average -3%/yr., the advisers’ own portfolios underperformed by an average -4%/yr. These findings led the researchers to conclude that in too many cases, advisers are drawn into the industry with the misguided strong belief that the combination of high-fee funds and high turnover will improve investment performance.

findings confirm yet again the wisdom of Commissioner Stromberg’s 1995 dual recommendations of establishing a clear ‘best interest’ fiduciary standard

Better Financial Outcomes for Clients

These new findings confirm yet again the wisdom of Commissioner Stromberg’s 1995 dual recommendations of establishing a clear ‘best interest’ fiduciary standard, as well as a clear competency standard for individuals providing investment advice in Canada.

As noted by one of us in a related op-ed (attached), Canada takes justifiable pride in our financial institutions and infrastructure. In doing so, we can ill afford to gloss over the nature of customer relationships or be perceived to lag other jurisdictions in our efforts to ensure fair dealing in financial markets. The stakes are too high (and are growing).

Attachments
ii See Bogle (2014), “The Arithmetic of ‘All-In’ Investment Expenses”, FAJ, Jan-Feb.
iii Linnainmaa, Melzer, and Previtera (2015), “Costly Financial Advice: Conflicts of Interest, or Misguided Investment Beliefs?”, Working Paper. The study was based on a sample of some 500K Canadian mutual fund investors with collective assets of $20B, being advised by some 5K investment advisors.
iv We noted that the client investment performance results reported in the new LMP (2015) study are consistent with those of prior studies of mutual fund performance performed over the course of the last 20 years. However, as far as we know, this is the first study to document that the average investment performance of the advisors’ own portfolios were even worse than those of their clients’. The study’s general findings are also consistent with a personal experience of one of the authors of this submission from some time ago. A 65-year-old just-retired friend requested an assessment of her $300K retirement savings portfolio. It was made up of five high-fee equity mutual funds with no obvious connection to her age, risk tolerance, or her approaching need for supplemental retirement income. Her ‘advisor’ was shocked when she informed him that she was closing the account and moving to a lower-cost solution more suitable to her circumstances.
v See “Make advisors work for investors” in the February 14, 2011 edition of the National Post.
6612727 v2
APPENDIX - BIOS
Keith Ambachtsheer was named ‘Top 30 Difference-Maker’ by P&I, the ‘Globe’s #1 Knowledge Broker in Institutional Investing’ and in the ‘Top 10 Influential Academic in Institutional Investing’ by aiCIO, in the ‘Top Pension 40’ by II, ‘Outstanding Industry Contributor’ by IPE, the Lilywhite Award winner by EBRI, and the ‘Professional Excellence’ and ‘James Vertin’ Awards winner by the CFA Institute.
He is Adjunct Professor of Finance, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, and Director Emeritus of its International Centre for Pension Management. He is a member of the Melbourne-Mercer Global Pension Index Advisory Council, the CFA Institute’s Future of Finance Advisory Council, and the Georgetown University Center for Retirement Initiatives Scholars Council.
Edward Waitzer served as Chair of the Ontario Securities Commission from 1993 to 1996. He holds the Jarislowsky Dimma Mooney Chair in Corporate Governance at Osgoode Hall Law School and the Schulich School of Business (York University) and is a senior partner (and former Chair) of Stikeman Elliott LLP.

"If the product sold is that of advice, then that advice should be in the best interest of the client. Anything else is fraud, because the seller is delivering a service different from what the consumer thinks he or she is buying."

Make advisors work for investors


Financial Post

Make advisors work for investors
Edward Waitzer, Financial Post ' Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2011

In January 2004, the Ontario Securities Commission released a concept paper advocating a "fair dealing model." The paper acknowledged that the regulatory regime -- regulating dealers and their representatives through the products they sell -- was based on the outdated assumption that transaction execution is the primary reason people seek financial services. Recognizing that most customers are seeking advice, the concept paper proposed changing the regulatory framework to focus on the advisory relationship.

Financial professionals and salespersons in Canada are allowed to call themselves advisors, irrespective of their professional designation. Few, however, are compensated directly for their advice. Instead, they are paid commissions to sell specific products. Addressing the conflicts of interest that result from commission-based compensation, the paper proposed that retail clients should be entitled to rely on objective advice that is in their best interest and, when there are conflicts of interest, they should be clearly disclosed so that the client can understand the conflicts and how they may affect the advice given.

In September 2004, the proposal was swept into a broader project of the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) and rebranded as the "client relationship model." Last month, the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) published its proposed reforms to establish requirements for the client relationship model. They specifically avoid imposing a duty on firms and their representatives to act in the best interest of clients, focussing instead on improving compliance with the existing "suitability" standard and improving disclosure with respect to conflicts of interest and performance reporting. IIROC noted that part of what influenced its thinking was an effort to harmonize with existing and proposed CSA standards (and other standards applicable to firms not under its jurisdiction).

To understand the difference between a "suitability" and "best-interest" standard, think of a student seeking advice at an electronics store about her need for a laptop. The salesperson recommends a highly priced unit with an expensive extended warranty -- all designed to generate the highest commission. The laptop is suitable--it will satisfy the student's needs. It clearly isn't the best
solution and a disclosure obligation isn't likely to stand in the way of a motivated salesperson. If the salesperson had been bound by a "best-interest" standard, he would recommend a simpler, more reliable and affordable unit.

In the U.S., brokers and investment advisors are subject to different standards when providing investment advice. Many investors
are unaware of these differences or their legal implications or find them confusing. In the wake of the global financial crisis, the Dodd -Frank Act required the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to evaluate the effectiveness of existing legal or regulatory standards of care for providing personalized investment advice to retail customers. Five months later and with the benefit of over 3,500 comment letters as well as a survey conducted by the CFA Institute (which already requires both a suitability and best-interest standard of its members in order to use the Chartered Financial Analyst professional designation) SEC staff released its analysis and recommendations.

It has proposed a uniform standard of conduct for all brokers, dealers and investment advisors providing personalized investment advice about securities to retail customers to act in the best interest of the customer.

The SEC staff study acknowledges that working through the details of such a standard so as to ensure it is practicable and cost effective will be complex. It does not propose a strict fiduciary duty, nor does it suggest rules to try to eliminate conflicts.

The U.K. Financial Services Authority (FSA) recently banned commissions for advised sales of retail investments and released proposals which would require advisors to explain why a product is better than a cheaper alternative. This and other more intrusive proposals are based on the FSA's realization that there are "fundamental reasons why financial services markets do not always work well for consumers."

The contrast in the direction, speed and intensity of regulatory reform between Canada and other major developed markets raises a number of questions and suggestions. Why did the OSC start down the path of a "best-interest" standard in 2004 and, while others (including the U.K., Europe and Australia) have caught up, we appear to have fallen back to where we started -- disclosure requirements and a relatively static "suitability" standard? To what extent is this a function of a fragmented regulatory framework suffering from bureaucratic inertia (and an industry suffering from regulatory fatigue)? What accountability mechanisms are required to motivate a more focussed and intense effort?

Why is it that Canadian regulators have shied away from proposing a "best-interest" standard? As one commentator to the SEC staff's study noted, "If the product sold is that of advice, then that advice should be in the best interest of the client. Anything else is fraud, because the seller is delivering a service different from what the consumer thinks he or she is buying." Many argue that it's the buyer's
responsibility to do due diligence and shop around for the best price. But should caveat emptor apply when buyers think they are hiring a professional to do the shopping?

There may be light at the end of this tunnel. Hopefully, the robust regulatory reform efforts underway elsewhere will inform and impose some discipline on our own. The OSC has a new chair. It recently established a highly credible Investor Advisory Panel, which has added this issue to its list of initiatives. FAIR Canada, the Hennick Centre for Business and Law, and the Toronto CFA Society are convening a second annual symposium on the subject next week. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has demonstrated genuine interest in investor protection -- most recently supporting a national strategy to strengthen financial literacy.
Canada takes justifiable pride in its financial institutions and infrastructure. In doing so we can ill afford to gloss over the nature of customer relationships or be perceived to lag other markets in our efforts to ensure fair dealing in financial markets.

- Edward Waitzer is a professor and director of the Hennick Centre for Business and Law at York University and a former chair of the Ontario Securities Commission.

More than 20 years later, the Canadian Securities Administrators is still studying these issues

AMBACHTSHEER and WAITZER

Our investment advisers’ moral compasses are still being aligned

KEITH AMBACHTSHEER and ED WAITZER Contributed to The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Aug. 19, 2016 5:00AM EDT

Keith Ambachtsheer is director emeritus of the International Centre for Pension Management at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, and president of KPA Advisory Services.
Edward J. Waitzer is Jarislowsky Dimma Mooney chair and director of the Hennick Centre for Business and Law, Osgoode Hall Law School and Schulich School of Business, and senior partner at Stikeman Elliott LLP.

In 1994, the Ontario Securities Commission asked one of its commissioners to undertake a review of regulatory issues facing what was then a rapidly growing investment fund industry. Commissioner Glorianne Stromberg’s report, released in January, 1995, highlighted inherent conflicts of interest with respect to the structuring and management of investment funds and the distribution of securities generally – all resulting in the interests of consumers not being placed first. She also noted the inadequacy of the training and proficiency of many of those who sell and manage investment funds. Her proposals addressed these conflicts of interests and proficiency gaps.

More than 20 years later, the Canadian Securities Administrators is still studying these issues. Many in the industry continue to argue that it is the client’s responsibility to do their homework. Should caveat emptor apply when buyers think they are hiring a professional to help them do the shopping?
With the passage of time, the significance of the issues highlighted in Ms. Stromberg’s report now have systemic implications. For one, a strong financial-services sector depends on public trust. This has been seriously eroded and is unlikely to be restored (or a sound regulatory framework built) unless investors are entitled to expect that the financial professionals they rely upon are proficient and will be held accountable to a uniform best- interest standard. As importantly, the lack of workplace pension coverage for the majority of Canadian workers, coupled with the ongoing transfer of wealth from savers to the financial sector through high investment fees, have become challenges to the adequacy of retirement income savings. We continue to kick the can down the road.

The notion that financial professionals must act in the best interests of their clients and make full disclosure, particularly regarding conflicts of interest, is long overdue. The need for such core principles have been recognized in most other mature market economies. The suggestion by some Canadian securities regulators is that incremental rules, in the absence of strong foundational principles, may be sufficient. The result, if this approach is taken, will defer practical solutions and raise expectations, which will be disappointed.

We must also look beyond principles that seek to provide a strong moral compass for the industry and focus on ensuring the proficiency of investment “professionals.” If accountants, actuaries and lawyers need to go through rigorous certification processes to practise their profession, why not investment advisers and managers? The stakes, for clients, are often higher, as a recent study concluded.

The study compared the investment behaviour and results of a large sample of Canadian mutual-fund investors with those of the investment advisers who serve them. The researchers found that while conflicts of interest impact the behaviour of some advisers, there is a bigger problem. In most cases, there was a strong correlation between how advisers advised their clients and how they invested themselves. In fact, on average, their investment results were worse than those of their clients. The researchers concluded that, in too many cases, advisers are drawn into the industry with the, misguided, strong belief that the combination of high- fee funds and high turnover will improve performance. This suggests that most investment advisers know no more about successful investing than their clients do.

Finally, it should not be surprising that countries with the strongest best-interest standards for financial advisers also have the strongest rules regarding workplace pension-plan participation. While fiduciary principles-driven funds will easily generate twice the pension per dollar of contribution than the average mutual-fund option, more than three-quarters of Canadian private-sector workers do not participate in a pension plan other than the Canada Pension Plan. The recent agreement to enhance CPP benefits has moved Canada’s retirement savings yardstick in the right direction, but will not fully bridge this looming retirement savings gap. Canada’s financial-services regulators and industry should play a constructive role by raising the bar on fiduciary conduct and designing and offering cost-effective workplace pension plans for 21st-century realities.




[url]
http://www.osc.gov.on.ca/documents/en/S ... sheerk.pdf[/url]

[admin]

This post will serve as the Executive Summary of the longer post immediately following, which contains data.

ANNUAL fees, commissions, costs and abuse of market dominance (price gouging) by giant financial institutions in Canada appears to be costing the Canadian economy an amount of money that is close to the government measured stats of the financial cost to Canadians of all the measured criminal acts in the land.

The Concepts of Financial Harm to Millions of Canadians are in this Summary, while the excruciating details are found in the longer report following. Please forgive the length and incomplete nature of the report. The academic budget devoted to studying High Value Systemic Fraud in Canada consists of a can opener and a piece of string....

Click to enlarge image

Comparison of two Morgan Stanley statements show the "Bait" of luring clients with promise of trusted advice....then the "Switch" of delivering them a commission broker who is not responsible for advice.

This same Bait and Switch is done by over 100,000 "advisors" (non-advisor-licensed sales agents" in Canada as was found in this study by the Small Investor Protection Association of Canada recently. http://sipa.ca/library/SIPAsubmissions/500%20SIPA%20REPORT%20-%20Advisor%20Title%20Trickery%20October%202016.pdf

The shopping list of financial harms, as viewed through the lens of an Investment Malpractice expert, is found below, in it's yet to be complete form. However, even unfinished, it points to concerns of three areas of financial harm to Canadians and measurements of those three:

1. Annual harms which are "built into" the systems, the investment (fees etc) and the annual cost of those investment products and systems.

2. Individual (one off) investment products, tricks or traps which the system allows due to the self-regulatory, or captured-regulatory nature of the game.

3. Systemic issues which ensure that causing financial harm, or ensuring a good financial 'harvest' of people who invest and save, becomes easier for those portions of the industry who practice in this manner.

http://sipa.ca/library/SIPAsubmissions/ ... 202016.pdf



Consumer Federation of America report on the fraud of commission brokers using self-title (advisor) to pretend to be SEC Adviser. The bait and switch of one "vowel movement".

http://consumerfed.org/wp-content/uploa ... Report.pdf

Please scroll down to the next posting to see a lengthy list of financial harms done to Canadians by our financial services providers and allowed to be done by literally dozens of financial regulatory agencies.

Depending upon which statistics are chosen for the cost of Canadian crime in financial terms to the country, I believe that a case can be (with data) made which supports the following statement:

ANNUAL fees, costs and abuse of market dominance (price gouging) by giant financial institutions in Canada appears to be costing the Canadian economy an amount of money that is close to the government measured stats on the financial cost to Canadians of all the measured criminal acts in the land.




Time and data permitting, study of the cost of one-off, or individual investment product failures, which number in the hundreds, will be complied. Please send any thoughts comments, or sourced examples of investment harm/failures to Canadians, to

visualinvestigations@shaw.ca

[admin]

INVESTMENT INDUSTRY HARVEST
Society’s Largest Economic Drain?



Executive Summary:

In a recent report by the Small Investor Protection Association of Canada, we were shown how easy it was to pull the wool over investors eyes. To conceal the true license of investment sellers, hiding their commission-sales role and giving investors a falsified impression of professional trust and agency duty. In Canada, over 100,000 Investment Advisors do NOT hold an Advisor license, nor the implied duty of care.

See report at SIPA titled: Advisor Title Trickery
http://sipa.ca/library/SIPAsubmissions/500%20SIPA%20REPORT%20-%20Advisor%20Title%20Trickery%20October%202016.pdf


Imagine if our most trusted financial institutions were misinforming or misdirecting their trusting clients, in order to glean more money for themselves. Imagine how much money could be made if it were possible to profit, from deceiving the public. In Canada.

 “Where the fundamental nature of the relationship is one in which customer depends on the practitioner to craft solutions for the customer’s financial problems, the ethical standard should be a fiduciary one that the advice is in the best interest of the customer. To do otherwise —

to give biased advice with the aura of advice in the customer’s best interest — is fraud.”

(this was the nutshell argument of report #1, Advisor Title Trickery)
 
James J. Angel, Ph.D., CFA and Douglas McCabe Ph.D., McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University, “Ethical Standards for Stockbrokers: Fiduciary or Suitability?” Sept. 30, 2010
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1686756

Then we learned that salaries of the top Securities Commission regulators in Canada are in the range of $500,000 to $700,000+ and those salaries are 100% funded by the industry, and not government. http://www.investoradvocates.ca/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=105#p3900

In this report, we look at a fraction of the costs imposed upon Canadian society and investors, arising as a consequence of the deceptions in the previous report. We view a partial record, by no means complete, of the financial harm to Canadians over the last two or three decades.

investment harms to Canadians, by investment industry professionals,appear to equal or exceed the financial cost of each and every crime in the land.

Why is this important?

If this were found to be possible, it would constitute one of the largest economic drains in the entire nation, and an injustice to every honest citizen. We let the numbers speak for themselves, and hope readers will add their voices, corrective comments, and forward this report to legislators both Provincially and Federally.

Lets begin with one example of the net effects of Investment Industry Self Dealing, before we get into the math:

Click to enlarge image and to zoom in

Jan 8, 2017 Globe and Mail story on bank misbehaviour, by Rob Carrick, linked here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/personal-finance/household-finances/bad-behaviour-from-the-big-banks-try-their-competitors/article33542334/


Annual Cost to Canada From “Professional” Financial Trickery $65 Billion each year

Trickery in this report is understood as professional self-dealing, deceptions, and abuse of market dominance, among other tricks and tactics. These result when investment sales agents, Dealer Representatives and commission salespersons, intentionally conceal their license and registration categories, as well as their agency duty to investors. These deceptions are contrary to Canada’s laws, as well as moral codes or conduct, and yet appear to be rampant and accepted, exempted, or ignored, by all regulatory bodies. The public is thus led into a false sense of trust based on deliberately false information.

Some Examples Of Dealer Self Dealing:

--Three divisions of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce have reached a settlement deal with the Ontario Securities Commission after revealing

they overcharged fees to clients for up to 14 years

.

An OSC statement of allegations said some clients were also not advised they met the minimum investment thresholds to qualify for lower-cost mutual funds within the same class, and instead were sold funds with higher management expense ratios. The OSC said the problem stretched back to August, 2006.

CIBC is the latest in a string of investment firms to face an OSC hearing for overcharging clients on mutual fund or account fees.

In July, three Bank of Nova Scotia divisions agreed to pay $20-million to compensate almost 46,000 clients who overpaid for investments back to 2009. Mutual fund giant CI Investments Inc. reached a deal in February to return $156-million to 360,000 clients who bought mutual funds over a five-year period when the company failed to detect errors in calculating fund valuations. In 2014, three subsidiaries of Toronto-Dominion Bank agreed to repay $13.5-million to clients who were overcharged fees.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/cibc-divisions-reach-deal-with-osc-over-excess-client-fees/article32521943/

-Morningstar article, which stated "Total fund management expenses paid in 2002 added up to more than $10 billion." and it appears to me to be a calculation of the "sum total" of management fees paid by Canadian mutual fund investors. http://investoradvocates.ca/viewtopic.p ... star#p3251

Would investors willingly pay each of these costs if they knew it was a “fee grab” and not investment “Advice”, as promised?

Canadians Mutual Fund Fees up to 100% higher than U.S. http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs07 ... 97878.html

-From page 14 “Only Canadian and Indian investors pay more than 2% for available-for-sale equity funds.” and “Canada, India, Italy, and Spain are the only countries with locally domiciled equity fund expense ratios above 2.00%.”


-From Page 15 “Canada is the only country in the survey with TERs (total expense ratios) in the highest (cost) grouping for each of the three broad categories.”
http://corporate.morningstar.com/us/doc ... ce2011.pdf


-page 22, “Among the 22 countries in this survey, Canada has the highest annual expense ratios for equity funds, the third highest for bond funds, and tied for the highest for money-market funds.”

-page 58 “ Canada has the highest overall expense ratios, scoring signi cantly higher than every other country for equity funds, and higher than every country except for locally domiciled Spain funds for money market funds. “

====

clients are being robbed of returns

Subject: CSA Consultation Paper 81-408 - Consultation on the Option of Discontinuing Embedded Commissions demonstrates massive DIY investor abuse

If we examine tables 13 and 15 of the CSA consultation document we find that only $12 Billion of the $30 billion in mutual funds are D class which means that $18 billion is invested in full trailer commission paying funds. Since discount brokers cannot and do not provide investment advice , clients are being robbed of returns. Clients are not being treated fairly, honestly and in good faith as required by securities laws. We've been asking IIROC for years to enforce the law ; we're still waiting for an answer. By the way, at 1% trailing Commission , that amounts to $180,000,000 that isn't going towards the retirement funds of Canadians!
http://www.osc.gov.on.ca/en/SecuritiesLaw_sn_20170110_81-408_consultation-discontinuing-embedded-commissions.htm
===


-“a failing F- grade in the category of ‘fees and expenses’, the lowest grade of all countries surveyed.” )

We pause here for a quick breath, and a sub total of financial harms to Canadian society from these sales tricks, dressed up as trusted “Advice”:

It seems like mutual fund self dealing comes in between $25 Billion per year, and $50 Billion per year, depending on whether we rely on U of Toronto Pension study numbers of 2007, or bring this up to date with 2017 numbers.

======

The latest statistics provided by the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) showed that in 2011 mutual fund investors paid $4.6 billion in trailing commissions to advisers and their firms, representing 34% of total revenue from MERs for that year.

[url]http://www.moneysense.ca/save/investing/mutual-funds/investors-dont-have-to-wait-for-canada-to-bury-trailers/
[/url]

Alberta’s Robb Engen, a fee based planner recently wrote this about the cost of trailing (hidden) commissions to Canadians:

According to a recent study by York professor Douglas Cumming, there are three ways that trailer fees cause harm to investors:

1.) More money is steered towards mutual funds that have higher trailer fees;

2.) Money is less likely to be taken out of mutual funds with poorer performance among funds that pay higher trailer fees, and;

3.) Mutual funds that raised their trailer fees experienced a drop in performance, while funds that lowered their trailer fees experienced a rise in performance.

Canadian securities regulators have been mulling a ban of trailer fees or embedded commissions for over two decades. The mutual fund industry, as you can imagine, is vehemently opposed to such a ban.

Canadian investors hold more than $1 trillion in mutual fund investments and pay over $5 billion in trailer fees every single year. Robb Engen

http://findependencehub.com/commission-based-advice-suitability-dangerous-combination/

Sales practices that maximize commission costs to customers and commission revenues to broker =up to $X bil each year on $YY bil per year in funds sales, @5% Deferred Sales Charges (DSC) ???

Wrap accounts, (fund of funds), house brand funds, etc. Wrap accounts (from the following image) made up 91% of mutual fund sales in this 2007 image from the industry:

Investors’ capital is steered towards funds that have higher trailer fees;

We appreciate that the industry has a substantial financial interest in keeping trailer fees in Canada, with over $5 billion per year charged to Canadian investors. My co-authors and I have no financial stake one way or the other. We simply report what the data indicate. Blame the data. Please don’t shoot the messenger.
Douglas Cumming, J.D., Ph.D., CFA, is Professor and Ontario Research Chair, York University Schulich School of Business

http://www.moneysense.ca/save/investing ... iler-fees/

=======


Canadian Mutual Fund charges trim $25 billion each year according to Keith Ambaschteer U of Toronto
University of Toronto 2007 pension study suggested that costs to Canadians of $500 million weekly, from Canadian mutual fund products alone when compared to institutional pension fund costs.

If the Canadian people, are being harvested by $500 million (2007 actual study figures) to $1 billion WEEKLY (our 2016 estimates), it is time that the financial regulatory forces of this nation received a gentle wake up, perhaps a shake up.

The $25 Billion Dollar Pension Haircut, University of Toronto, 2007
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzE_LMP ... NGYxODAzZj

Mutual funds- excessive fees ( Canada has highest in the world) Morningstar report 2011

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=177&start=30#p2245

END OF MUTUAL FUND ANNUAL “HARVEST” NUMBERS

Toxic new issues, faulty income trusts, junk securities sold to the public = $20 billion each year (see detailed posting to follow)

Fractured regulators = $10 billion each year Prof John Coffee, Columbia University, or approx $100 billion out of pockets of investors since this article was written in 2007.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=105&p=3844&hilit=coffee#p3844




Double/Triple dipping fund (trailer commissions on top of advisor fees on top of sales commissions, on top of fund Management expense fees) =$1 bil (conservative estimate based on personal experience from 20 years in industry)

Dealers pushing fee-based account charges (adding unnecessary fees to clients accounts) = $500 million per big bank (estimate based on personal experience inside industry, also See footnotes in RBC management presentation page 15 and 24 http://www.investisseurautonome.info/PD ... gement.pdf (also called “reverse churning”)

Churning clients for commissions, unknown. (note: Britain has banned the use of commissions as a form of compensation for those who call themselves financial advisors)

I met with an elderly investor recently…..with a large account which her “advisor” (truly a commission salesperson representing the interests of dealer revenues) wanted to put him into the latest and greatest Investment Dealer trend, a “Fee Based Account”. This would have merely added 2% fees to the account and otherwise done little else, and would have added sixty thousand dollars to this account.

As client age, they become more and more vulnerable, and (non fiduciary) advisors/dealers find ways to squeeze greater amounts of fees from their trusting elderly clients. The trend toward fee-based accounts and products is like creating an “annuity” to the dealer, from the accounts of their clients and not always done for the best interests of the investor.

Canadian investors should not need financial “bodyguards”, to protect them from financial “advisors”

(aka salespersons).

Investments of Ill-Repute


Canadian investors lost an estimated total of $1.9 billion in the fifteen financial scandals reviewed
http://faircanada.ca/wp-content/uploads ... -02221.pdf

A Report on A Decade of Financial Scandals
FAIR Canada Calls for a National Action Plan to Tackle Investment Fraud
http://faircanada.ca/submissions/report ... ppendix-b/


“Canada appears to have a serious problem with financial fraud and government, regulators, police and prosecutors do not seem to be effective at prevention, detection and prosecution.”

“Financial Crimes Devastate Individuals - As of July 2009, an estimated 1.3 million Canadians have been victims of fraud at some point during their lives. In many cases, investors lose a significant part of or their entire life savings. The impact on their lives is devastating and irreversible.”



Other Common Investment Toxins To Canadian’s Financial Health



PPN’s -(Principle Protected Notes) excessive fees, opaque disclosure

LSIF’s- just don’t make money A labour-sponsored venture capital corporation (LSVCC), known alternately as labour-sponsored investment fund (LSIF) or simply retail venture capital (RVC), is a fund managed by investment professionals that invests in small to mid-sized Canadian companies. The Canadian federal government and some provincial governments offer tax credits to LSVCC investors to promote the growth of such companies.

Structured products – complex/expensive, forensic analysis of one bank structured product discovered up to five layers of fees buried in them. A veritable bounty of fees to the investment bankers peddling these.

Bad new issues, faulty income trusts, junk securities dumped onto the public = $20 billion each year (see detailed posting to follow)

Sales practices that maximize commissions to customers/rev to broker =1 bil each year $20 bil per year in funds sales, @5% DSC

Double dipping (fees on top of commissions or vice versa) =$1 bil (ultra conservative estimate based on personal experience from 20 years inside industry)

Reverse Churning: The art of placing as much of ones clients into annual-fee- based accounts, and then collecting an annuity of up to 2% from every dollar in every client account, every day of the year.

Fee based accounts, where the objective is to create a “fee annuity” to the dealer and not necessarily or primarily in the interests of the investor.


More Investments of Ill-Repute
ONE-OFF JUNK INVESTMENTS

$39 billion in this short list of 73 one-offs

Average of $500 million per “investment”

HERCULES MANAGEMENT $40mil
VICTORIA MORTGAGE $50mil
CANADIAN COMMERCIAL BANK $1 bil
NORTHLAND BANK $230mil
PRINCIPAL GROUP $500mil
STANDARD TRUST $50mil
TEACHERS INVESTMENT AND HOUSING CO-OPERATIVE $150mil
CASTOR HOLDINGS $2bil
BRAMALEA $1bil
CARTAWAY $450mil
GOLDEN RULE RESOURCES $350mil
BRE-X $ 6 bil
CONFEDERATION LIFE $10bil
SHAMRAY GROUP $7mil
LIVENT $500mil
YBM MAGNEX$650 mil
JEVCO INSURANCE$30mil
COREL $500mil

PHILLIPS SERVICES $2.6 bil
MERIT ENERGY $100mil
KING'S HEALTH CENTER$100mil
CINAR $1.4 bil
VISUAL LABS$300mil
HOLLINGER $500mil

CROCUS $150mil
PORTUS $120mil
NORTHSHIELD $500mil
NORBOURG $80mil
List Source Diane Urquhart, independent consulting analyst. Toronto.

Income Trusts sold with a deceptive yield

$8 billion of investor losses on 46 income trust IPO's and secondary
offerings down more than 30%, where investment bank marketing
materials gave deceptive yields and assurances of low risk to seniors
seeking income and preservation of capital. Not the subject of any SRO or
provincial securities commission regulatory restrictions or investigations.
For details see:
m http://www.sipa.ca/

Harm Caused by Exemptions to Our Laws

One crime was $32 billion

Thousands of exemptions granted in secret for which no data is available, but some details shown below

8764 exemptions appear online at the Alberta Securities Commission

Exemptions to the law are the hidden way in which investment product makers and sellers can dispose of defective products….silently dumping them onto the consumer without notice of the defects, or warning of the exemptions. No public notice need be given when laws are exempted. No public input or discourse is allowed, and you may never know if you have been the victim of an investment which received an exemption to be sold to you, by the regulator who was charged with protecting you. It feels like a world where the regulator is “running a business within a business”, which endears them to the industry, feathers some nests and justifies the industry paying our Canadian regulators up to $700,000 salaries. (for a “government” regulator:).

The regulatory racket of granting exemptive relief from the law, appears not to be making things better for the public, but in “milking” things better…from the public.

PS. Provincial regulators when asked, will give no protocols, no procedures and no public interest reasons for granting exemptions to our laws. They act completely above the need to be accountable to the public.


Some examples of exemptive relief from our public protective laws:


commission kickback exemption

Securities law "exemptions". A license to steal?
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=143


At this web site are 42 posts about exemptions granted to avoid our laws [url]http://www.investoradvocates.ca/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=143&sid=e30dcbdb8214411b092ca9003bf442d3
[/url]
At this post are “ABCP's of stealing $35 Billion. Case study 2 for inquiry” 139 posts covering the largest crime in Canadian history, the lifting of $35 Billion from the pockets of Canadians. All aided with securities commissions who granted “exemption” to our protective laws to enable faulty products, toxic products, junk investments to be dumped on the public. In each exemption case the justification given by each Securities Commission was the same, and it was this exact reason: “Each of the Decision Makers is satisfied that the test contained in the Legislation that provides the Decision Maker with the jurisdiction to make the decision has been met.”


The non-bank ABCP market collapsed in August, 2007, leaving investors holding about $35-billion of frozen notes, including 2,542 individuals with investments totalling $317-million.
Private (non regulatory authorities) "negotiate" free do not go to jail passes for participants in return for a refund of small investors monies, and when they have legal immunity, they still do not return the money as promised. (see Purdy Crawford for get out of jail on this one and on $1 bil tobacco smuggling cleanup) Governments have to bail money into this sinking ship in order for small investors to get refunds. Thanks Purdy, keep up the great work you do for……….

http://www.investoradvocates.ca/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=177&start=30#p2249


$2 billion was taken from the PSPP (the pension plan of retired judges and RCMP) at the same time that judges were granting "immunity" from prosecution to those responsible (I assume they do not know to this day, but the PSPP annual report for 2008 includes the write downs)


Each of these toxic pools of sub-prime debt, did not meet the rating requirements to be sold to the public, but Dealers were stuck with the product and desperately needed to “dump” them like a hot potato.

Enter the byzantine world where Securities Commission will accept a “fee”, and without notice to the public, or warning to investors, will allow public protective laws to be “exempted”, which allows some fairly bad investment products to be unloaded upon the investing public.

Here is a fraction of the investors (from memory only) who got these toxic products dumped on them by salespersons, posing as “advisors”.

ALBERTA TREASURY BRANCH (>1.2billion)
UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY (18 Million)
UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA (50 Million)
CITY OF LETHBRIDGE (30 Million)
City of Hamilton ($90 mil+)
RETAIL INVESTORS (4.2 Billion)



Over 2500 smaller investors……some whose lives were ruined with alcoholism, depression, suicide, family breakup. The list of harms to society includes far more than merely being Canada’s greatest economic drain. It is putting some of our most vulnerable people, often seniors, into poverty and despair.

http://www.investoradvocates.ca/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=177#p2610

Regulator fines and settlements from the 7 investment banks who settled, and the Coventree fine was only $140 million. All of the investment banks received immunity from lawsuits.

The fines imposed in the end amounted to less than one half of one penny for each and every dollar missing.

More than a hundred pension funds in Canada had invested their cash directly or through their manager in commercial paper backed by financial assets. About $16 billion in total. This was not by greed, but by fiduciary duty to maximize the return on assets to their participants. A possible error, but there was also a tragic lack of information in this fully deregulated market.


There are big name losses among those pension funds: Domtar ($455 million), Ontario Teachers ($60 million) and plans for university professors of Western Ontario ($30 million), Alberta (over $40 million) and British Columbia, the pension fund of credit unions ($60 million), Canada Post ($27 million), but also more pension funds managed by the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec ($12,600 million) and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board ($1,972 million).

http://www.investoradvocates.ca/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=140&start=45#p1912

The Public Service Pension Plan of Canada (PSPP) took a writedown/loss in their 2008/2009 financial report for approximately $2 billion dollars. This is the pension plan for retired RCMP and judges. Ironically, the RCMP did not even know their pensions were being robbed, when they worked alongside the regulatory bodies to quietly close a complaint file alleging criminal activity. The RCMP also did not seem to know that the regulatory bodies they “collaborate” with, are the very agencies who granted exemption to our laws to allow these tainted investments to be sold in Canada.

When I search for the word “Exemption” at my local securities commission I get 8,764 results. But not a single document to justify the exemptions as being in the public interest.

I recall one exemption which was granted to a bank, late one friday evening, when one the bank’s underwriting department, was having difficulty selling a new investment issue, it was not being well received in the marketplace. Yet the bank’s underwriting people could not “look bad” internally and let the bank be stuck with a bunch of junk product on the shelf. What did they do, they applied for an exemption to the laws which prevented them from dumping the bad product into their bank customer’s mutual fund holdings, and Viola!. Problem solved with the swipe of a pen, from a friendly regulator.

There are so many like that. Or the mutual fund and life insurance dealer that learned (and bragged) on it’s share selling prospectus that they could earn “nine to sixteen times” more money if they switched their trusting clients out of high quality and independent mutual fund investments, and into their own “house brand” created funds, with higher commissions, higher annual fees, and zero track record. They applied and received an exemption for just this, and another exemption backdated, for all the provinces that they did this in without asking to skirt the law……they skirted the law first, took advantage of the clients, THEN applied for for exemption a year or two later….I am not making this up.

There are exemptions on the books granted (in Alberta) to Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, HSBC, every Canadian Bank and investment dealer, etc.
==
Here is an exemption to the Oleary Funds seeking to obtain relief from restrictions on only being able to lend out 50% of the underlying assets of their investors mutual funds…..or something to that effect. Read it yourself and see if you can spot how regulators, lawyers and financiers apply to bend the rules. Rules designed to protect investors.

[url]http://www.osc.gov.on.ca/en/SecuritiesLaw_ord_20120309_219_oleary-fund.htm
[/url]

Nearly all of the exemptions on record, carry this statement as their only justification/explanation for removing the lawful protections of the Securities Act:

Each of the Decision Makers is satisfied that the decision meets the test set out in the Legislation for the Decision Maker to make the decision.

some actual exemption examples with links so you can read for yourself what happens behind closed doors at Securities Regulators offices.

Exemptive relief granted from the mutual fund self-dealing restrictions in the Securities Act (Ontario)….. http://www.osc.gov.on.ca/en/SecuritiesLaw_ord_20121129_216_invesco.htm


=========
RBC GLOBAL ASSET MANAGEMENT INC
Exemptions granted from the mutual fund conflict of interest investment restrictions and management reporting requirements and self-dealing prohibition. http://www.osc.gov.on.ca/en/SecuritiesLaw_ord_20121129_212_rbc-global.htm

==================

“Exemption from the requirement to include the financial statement disclosure” [url] http://www.osc.gov.on.ca/en/SecuritiesL ... aleant.htm
[/url]
Valiant Pharmaceuticals? What could go wrong? (About $400 Billion may evaporate...equal to the entire market cap of any of Canada’s top companies) This alone would rival up to eight years of all the crime measured in the land...

“Each of the Decision Makers is satisfied that the decision meets the test set out in the Legislation for the Decision Maker to make the decision.”

the test set out in the Legislation??

something about it …..must not be “detrimental to investors or the public interest”…..but no commission I have seen has ever demonstrated a protocol or procedure to determine this, nor have I seen any documentation in ANY exemption decision to support such a protocol. I have asked for such documented protocol and been refused 100% of requests.

============================


relief for dealer-managed mutual funds to invest in distributions of debt securities for which dealer-manager acts as underwriter during distribution period or 60 day period following distribution

When banks get stuck with a bad underwriting, and they cannot sell it to the public, they CAN dump them into customers-owned mutual funds…..funds which are managed and run by the banks…….A bad but usually hidden example of self-dealing by banks, while doing harm to bank mutual fund investors. All they need to do is to apply to their securities commission for exemption to the laws.

http://www.osc.gov.on.ca/en/SecuritiesLaw_ord20100813_2110_cibc.htm

———-
An exemption to Assante to give commission rebates to clients who are “advised” out of their independent third party funds, and instead sold the Assante house-brand funds.

ASSANTE CORPORATION
 
MRRS DECISION DOCUMENT
WHEREAS the local securities regulatory authority…..an application from Assante Corporation (the “Filer”)…..that the prohibitions on certain rebates contained in section 7.1 of NI 81-105 shall not apply to rebates paid by representatives to clients who are switching from third party products to mutual funds managed by, or by an affiliate of, the Filer;

http://www.osc.gov.on.ca/en/SecuritiesLaw_ord_20040220_211_assante.htm
Commission rebating to encourage switch of client independent mutual funds to Assante’s “house brand” to earn Assante Nine to Fifteen times greater earnings as stated in their 1999 Prospectus……self dealing with clients trust?

AND WHEREAS, on April 15, 1999, the Original Jurisdictions granted an exemption to the Filer from section 7.1 under section 9.1 of NI 81-105 (the "Prior Exemption”);


In a Category All It’s Own, Exempt Market “Securities”
What are they?

Exempt Market Securities are often investment issues which are smaller in size, and may not be able to afford the $1 million dollar cost of drawing up a legal prospectus.

They often involve condominium projects, golf courses, and other developments of all kinds, but of much smaller scale than typical Investment Dealer offerings. As a result, they apply to eliminate the cost of the prospectus, and market them through specific types of dealers who seem to specialize in these products.

Without impugning the products, I find them often sold to investors for whom they are unsuitable, and marketed in a manner designed to lure less sophisticated investors, who are starved for investment yield and investment solutions, and will jump at nearly any shiny brochure with a hotel ballroom sales pitch. There may of course be legitimate exempt market products out there, I just have not been witness to them.

In my community I can point to a church-related organization which raised over $500 million during the boom years, failed to complete a single project out of about two dozen, and instead gave investors 100% losses. I can point to considerable numbers of such schemes in Alberta alone.

Sadly, because they have been approved for sale by Securities Commissions, most marketers and investors can too easily assume a level of scrutiny and legitimacy to this market, and I do not find this a safe assumption to make overall.

They have been aggressively marketed to less sophisticated investors,

At a conference in Toronto hosted by the Association of Canadian Compliance Professionals, David Di Paolo, partner at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, said regulators are monitoring exempt market transactions much more closely as the scope of the market grows. He estimates that in 2010, $83.9 billion was raised in the exempt market.


Exempt market securities in Alberta lose $2 billion. Most lose 100%, TOTAL loss.

Between 20,000 and 30,000 Albertans have suffered TOTAL loss of their investments, and in some cases their life savings as a result of products sold under the approval of the Alberta Securities Commission, but with “exemption” from the prospectus requirements of our Securities Act? (exempt market products) This (exempt market products) is another entire realm of abusing securities laws to abuse Albertan’s.

http://www.albertainvestorsprotection.com

Other Canadian Provinces all have their own Exempt Market stories to tell.


Investors lost $8.8 million after being referred to firm that subsequently want bankrupt

http://www.investmentexecutive.com/-/fund-rep-banned-fined-over-exempt-market-losses?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=nl&utm_content=investmentexecutive&utm_campaign=INT-EN-All-afternoon

Concrete Equities
Platinum Equities
etc., etc etc

Click on image to enlarge and zoom in.


FINALLY, WE ARRIVE AT THE HEART OF THE MATTER

So….which does more harm to Canadians and to society, investment products “sold” to investors by commission salespeople posing (falsely) as “advisors”….or any number of typical criminal offences against society?

It is fairly easy to search for the costs of criminal offences in Canada, but this report on investment industry practices, may be a beginning towards tabulating the cost of the hidden systemic financial harms to society.

COST OF ALL “MEASURED” CRIMES IN CANADA

Justice Canada’s previous study was in 2008, and it put the social and economic costs of Criminal offences in Canada at $31.4 Billion per year.
http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj- ... rr10_5.pdf

Another source of information is from this Fraser Institute report, 2014

The Cost of Crime in Canada: 2014 Report
While in 1998 Canada spent over $42.4 billion on crime—$15.5 billion on what we think of as the direct cost of crime and the remainder on the less easily measured consequences for the victims—today’s estimates reveal that Canadians spend over $85 billion being victimized by, catching, and punishing crime. Victims’ losses through criminal acts committed against them amount to over $47 billion, more than half of the total. The current cost of crime is over 5% of our national product and this is an underestimate.
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/researc ... 014-report

And according to Stats Canada, the number of property crime violations in 2015 was 1,154,315 offences.

By way of comparison, our industry-insider estimates in this report come up with costs of systemic and/or intentional harm done to Canadians by a self-regulating investment industry (not counting banking industry offences) is seen to be in the neighbourhood of $65 Billion per year, on average, plus a steady stream of one-off, imaginative “flavour of the month” investments which appear more designed to prey upon Canadians…than to be of service to them. One offs listed herein amount to over $76 Billion.
==========================

Notes for an address by The Honourable Peter MacKay, PC, MP Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
Economic Club of Canada
Westin Hotel
Ottawa, Ontario
February 6, 2015

Although it's extremely difficult to accurately put a price on crime, a recent report from the Fraser Institute, titled The Cost of Crime in Canada, has made a valiant attempt. Not surprisingly, it concluded that crime is an incredibly expensive drain on society.

The report estimates that crime cost Canadians more than $85 billion in fiscal year 2009-2010. That's roughly five percent of GDP. Some recent estimates go as high as $100 billion per year. That's all-in justice costs and impact on lost productivity.

http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?nid=965699

========================

It is hoped that these numbers can be used as a base for more thorough academic study into the social and economic cost of systemic, self regulated investment industry harms to Canadian society. Readers who wish to send me corrections or additions to this topic will find them welcomed and added where they may fit. In this way a report such as this may grow and change over time, becoming more accurate, and more useful to society.

The number of systemic financial offences in Canada is not calculated, but is assumed to be in the thousands, made up of hundreds of different investment product types. These investments are then spread among millions of investment consumers. Each product type has a regulatory or self regulatory body monitoring it (mutual funds, insurance products, stocks and bond sales etc)

The total harm is estimated at $139 billion from the varieties of systemically harmful products followed herein.

2 mil street crimes in Canada 2015 did harm of $40 billion in round numbers, while a number of a few thousand “Suite Crimes” can do harm to Canada of $139 billion.

In the case of Hollinger, where Conrad Black was convicted of doing some $500 million in economic harm, and was one of two persons convicted, his position allowed him to do a similar amount of crime than could be done by 50,000 street level offences. One man able to do the crime of 50,000 people, and yet in Canada, we can count the prosecutions of this type of thing on one hand……and someprosecutions (Livent, Garth Drabinsky, $ 500 million, take time measured not in months, but in decades, here in Canada.

Sadly, his (Conrad Black’s) conviction did not even take place in Canada, but it was the U.S. system of justice which convicted him. Canada simply appears to be most interested in NOT prosecuting it’s highest status financial mobsters. It seems to be the Canadian way.

One could go a step further and imagine that a single systemic financial infraction can do as much economic and or social harm to Canada as the total harm done by one million ordinary crimes. $35 was billion taken from Canadians, in just one type of crime, with sub-prime mortgage investments 2008.


Now let us look at how much money is spent on catching ordinary criminals verses the systemic financial folks.

ordinary crime systemic financial crime/mega criminals
police $14 Billion 30 million RCMP IMET
courts $1 Billion unknown est. single digit millions?
jails and corrections $5 Billion unknown est. single digit millions?

Court and jail costs for mega criminals needs more work, as the small number of court cases and jail time in Canada reflects a reluctance to even bother pursuing mega criminals in Canada. Conrad Black had to be pursued in a Chicago courtroom for example. No prosecutors could bother in Canada. I am willing to update this report at anytime that better information becomes available.


When we look at the dollars spent on the systemic investment crimes, verses those spent on “ordinary” criminal offences, it seems apparent that 466 times as many resources are spent on catching crime in the streets, while only 2/1000ths of the funds are dedicated to crime in the suites….

”Two, one-thousands, as much spent to pursue organized financial mega crimes, as opposed to spending on “ordinary” crime in Canada.”

And that may explain why fines of less than one-half of a penny, for every dollar taken in Canada’s largest financial ripoff were levied…..

the regulators were in on granting the permission slips (exemptions to our laws) to allow the ripoffs….

It is almost like Canada’s systems are designed and incentivized more to NOT catch our most harmful criminals.

And yet a gang of well dressed criminals in a boardroom, can do the same social and economic harm as the harm done by one thousand or more criminals in the streets.

What if our “trusted” bankers, investment dealers, and offshore tax specialists, are doing ten, one hundred or one thousand times, greater harm than do the Hells Angels or Mafia?

An economic study by P Puri, University of Toronto, 19)?? stated that Canada suffers from having the strongest financial institutions in the world, alongside the weakest regulators in the world…perhaps there is a design for this imbalance?

Perhaps it is the Canadian disadvantage…the largest drain on our entire economic health, and the greatest financial harvest in the country.

It also must be noted, for students wishing to study systemic financial crime, that OBSI, the official banking ombudsman office has as recently as a few years ago been FORBIDDEN to investigate or pursue systemic financial issues. Forbidden to look. What could go wrong with an industry so powerful that it gives orders to the regulators as to what they can and cannot look into.

Protocol for Handling Systemic Issues Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investment (OBSI) and OBSI Joint Regulators Committee (JRC)
https://www.obsi.ca/en/download/fm/528

This protocol gives full discretion BACK to the regulators (who are paid by industry) on whether or not to pursue issues of a systemic nature against their members….)

This image shows systemic powers of OBSI being removed, (examples of anything “Systemic” being crossed off of OBSI’s mandate) in 2013
https://www.obsi.ca/download/fm/149 page 3

Furthermore, when some banks (RBC TD etc) were unhappy with the penalties or decisions of this particular regulator, they either refused to pay the penalty, or simply walked-away from this ombudsman, and hired their very own legal entities to “arbitrate” complaints against them. This is another sign of hidden systemic cracks, that, like and underground oil well frack, can cause earthquakes of unimaginable magnitude, harming the financial foundations of every citizen in Canada.

from page 8 https://www.obsi.ca/download/fm/149

(OBSI was effectively “neutered” by the industry they were responsible to police, telling all who care to listen, “who is in charge, the watchers, or the mega financial criminals”? It is the criminals.)


Regulators, police and prosecutors in Canada seem “throttled back” or restrained from investigating anything large, systemic or meaningful….and instead focus on the minor or crimes and minutia only.

This provides a “facade” of what appears to be protective financial industry regulation, while actually allowing the largest and most harmful effects of financial crime, to drain the economy of Canada, and diminish the economic security of every Canadian.

Thus, the unique violence of unregulated financial crime. Hidden. Unprotected. Unprosecuted. A tremendously rewarding, low risk career for any financial “professional”. This is due to our most “trusted” institutions being well above the reach of our mechanisms of justice.

SOLUTIONS


Provinces who wish to protect the public from unfair dealing, should establish Investor Protection Agencies, with government staffing, government funding, and police-like powers, including a mandate to involve the criminal code, which is now often ignored in favour of “self” regulation. These agencies could direct their energies to sole protection of consumers, rather than the “dual-master/dual-mandate” style of regulation that is failing us.

An Investor Protection body should not contain committees or boards who are filled with industry spokespersons, but should be over-weighted towards persons who can demonstrate and uphold a strong public interest protective mandate. Any board protecting the financial health of a nation, or its citizens must be designed to be robust enough to resist the pull of billion dollar corporations.

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Final thoughts:
From the book "DARK AGE AHEAD", by Jane Jacobs

"The first crime is the actual abuse of trust, whether it be a financial advisor taking advantage of his client for personal gain,, child abuse, malpractice, embezlement, bribe, whatever."

"The second crime is the cover up, involving individuals of considerable power or influence who were not involved personally in the initial wrongdoing, but whose sense of loyalty is stronger than their attachment to honesty and openness. Since exaggerated loyalty may be the very quality that gives such people power and influence, it is hard to know what can be done about loyalty as self serving weakness."

"The third crime is the hoodwinking of police and the public with false assurances that all is well."


==================links, sources, stats below============




2015 Number of Crime Violations 2,111,021

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/legal50a-eng.htm

The Cost of Crime in Canada: 2014 Report
While in 1998 Canada spent over $42.4 billion on crime—$15.5 billion on what we think of as the direct cost of crime and the remainder on the less easily measured consequences for the victims—today’s estimates reveal that Canadians spend over $85 billion being victimized by, catching, and punishing crime. Victims’ losses through criminal acts committed against them amount to over $47 billion, more than half of the total. The current cost of crime is over 5% of our national product and this is an underestimate.
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/research/cost-crime-canada-2014-report


In 2008, the total (tangible) social and economic costs of Criminal Code offences in Canada were approximately $31.4 billion. 1.

Costs of Crime in Canada, 2008
http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/crime/rr10_5/rr10_5.pdf


Justice spending

Total police expenditures 2008

$11,448,937,000 http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj- ... rr10_5.pdf
 ====
The costs pertaining to the Canadian criminal justice system in 2008 amounted to about $15.0 billion for policing, court, prosecution, legal aid, correctional services and mental health review boards.2
http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/crime/rr10_5/rr10_5.pdf


Total Criminal Court Costs $672,392,760
http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/crime/rr10_5/rr10_5.pdf

Total Court Costs to Prosecute systemic Crimes over $100 million by White Collar Criminals======ZERO??? (there are no stats, and no cases known to myself of prosecuting financial crimes above about nine figures ($100 million) in Canada It is an area that appears to be above our laws and justice system capabilities


Total Correction Costs $4,836,224,546

Total Correction Costs for white collar criminals?
How many bankers and investment bankers do you know of who go to jail?

http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj- ... rr10_5.pdf


Total Value of Pain and Suffering $65,100,168,642 2008

Total Value of Pain and Suffering White collar systemic Crime =Not measured?
http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/crime/rr10_5/rr10_5.pdf

Year-end operating expenditures for police services in Canada in 2014/2015 totalled $13.9 billion in current dollars.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2016001/article/14323-eng.htm

(Nearly 500 times more spent on ordinary crime than on our larger problem, systemic financial crime?)


Annual Spending on Catching the Perps

Integrated Market Enforcement Teams
The Integrated Market Enforcement Teams (IMETs) are special RCMP-led units that detect, investigate and deter capital markets fraud. They promote compliance with the law in the corporate community and assure investors that Canada's markets are safe and secure. The IMET Initiative is a partnership with Justice Canada's Federal Prosecution Service, provincial and municipal forces and securities commissions and market regulators.

https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/cntr ... t-eng.aspx


White-collar crime task force 'doomed to failure' unless separated into ...
news.nationalpost.com/.../white-collar-crime-task-force-doomed-to-failur...


Nov 29, 2015 - During the first five years of IMET's existence, it received $30 million annually, the largest chunk going to the RCMP. Beginning in 2008, funding …

====================




(teaming with sec commissions, who are paid 100% by industry players, taints the criminal investigative process when the regulators involved themselves (granting exemptions to our laws) in actions that precipitated or helped in the removal of $35 billion from Canada.


http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canad ... ed-mountie RCMP IMET in range of $30 million


=========
A guarantee that systemic investment crimes will not be investigated……


RCMP securities unit moving into OSC offices - The Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com › Report on Business › Industry News › Law

1 Similar
Mar 2, 2015 - The RCMP's low-profile securities investigation unit is moving into the ... The RCMP said the Toronto IMET team laid no charges in 2012, but …

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/the-law-page/rcmp-securities-unit-moving-into-osc-offices/article23247433/

========

David Baines: Is the RCMP Integrated Market Enforcement team a ...
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/David+ ... story.html
Feb 5, 2013 - Is the federal government finally pulling the plug on the RCMP Integrated Market Enforcement Team? There.
[url]http://www.vancouversun.com/news/David+Baines+RCMP+Integrated+Market+Enforcement+team+dead+duck/7922979/story.html
[/url]
======
Nortel case caused RCMP to question their ability to solve crimes ...
o.canada.com/.../rcmp-raised-concerns-about-ability-to-crack-down-on-whi...
May 1, 2013 - Formed in 2003, the RCMP's IMET program comprised teams of “highly specialized” investigators in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal …

“This decision may raise questions as to whether the Canadian justice system as a whole is equipped to deal with complex fraud cases of this nature and magnitude.”

http://o.canada.com/news/national/rcmp-raised-concerns-about-ability-to-crack-down-on-white-colllar-crime-after-nortel-aquittals-letter-shows

=====

Spending on white collar crime enforcement, financial crimes, stock or bond market fraudsters, ponzi schemes etc, is literally in the “thousandth's, fractionally compared to what is spent on all other crimes combined, despite financial crimes being equal to or greater than all other crimes combined. (According to experts financial crime is greater than all other crimes combined, in fact FBI studies in the United States puts it vastly larger than ordinary crimes.)

http://www.alternet.org/story/54093/twenty_things_you_should_know_about_corporate_crime

Twenty Things You Should Know About Corporate Crime
end: headline start: teaser

Did you know that corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined? This and 19 more amazing facts

(article about some of the tricks of the trade in American crime, and here in Canada, we are 40 years away from even talking about it)

We conclude that investment harms to Canadians, by investment industry professionals, equals or exceeds the financial cost of each and every crime in the land.

From the 1940 book “Where are the Customers Yachts?” https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN ... pictu09-20

============

addendum Jan, 2017

We appreciate that the industry has a substantial financial interest in keeping trailer fees in Canada, with over $5 billion per year charged to Canadian investors. My co-authors and I have no financial stake one way or the other. We simply report what the data indicate. Blame the data. Please don’t shoot the messenger."

Douglas Cumming, J.D., Ph.D., CFA, is Professor and Ontario Research Chair, York University Schulich School of Business

http://www.moneysense.ca/save/investing/blowing-smoke-on-trailer-fees/

[admin]

Is there a Two Tiered System of Justice In Canada?

Commit fraud as a citizen and go to jail.
Commit fraud as a financial advisor,....no jail. Ever?

Crime is free when your industry pays the salaries of every Securities Commission, and self-regulator in the land.

52 year old woman found guilty of defrauding social assistance of more than $111,000. Penalty: 90 days in jail, probation for three years, 200 hours of community service, $1,191.41 in restitution, a separate restitution order for $100,000, garnishing of future wages, apology letter, and a $200 victim surcharge.
http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/News/Local/2016-05-17/article-4531155/Welfare-fraud-earns-woman-90-days-in-jail/1

vs

Financial advisor cheats an 85 year old elderly client out of more than a $150,00 Penalty: loses his license to practice
http://montrealgazette.com/business/financial-adviser-barred-for-life-for-appropriating-funds?__lsa=ad78-a7f3

Moral of the Story

52 year old woman decides to use time in prison to study Canadian Securities Course and become a Financial Advisor!

In a post script, I add in these areas which are worth keeping in mind. They are part of the many root causes of billions upon billions cheated (by financial industry professionals) from Canadians, year after year:

1. Millions of dollars of uncollected fines http://www.sipa.ca/library/SIPAsubmissions/500%20SIPA%20REPORT%20Unpaid%20Fines%20A%20National%20Disgrace%20-%20April%202016.pdf
2. tens of thousands of “advisors” found to be without an advisor license (this story is also not going away anytime soon….) http://unpublishedottawa.com/letter/64996/funny-thing-happened-way-ottawa
3. Criminal code applies to crimes…..except crimes of the financial industry http://www.investoradvocates.ca/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=177
4. thousands of exemptions to the law granted, without public notice or warning, in order to sell defective advice/products to the public http://www.investoradvocates.ca/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=143
and this link http://www.investoradvocates.ca/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=105#p3864
5. and so on...

[admin]

Bank CEOs are the New Drug Lords.

Here is a list of some of the banks managed by Bank CEOs, aka the new Drug Lords, that were fined billions of dollars for fixing LIBOR rates and stealing money from clients: Lloyds Bank, RP Martin, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Société Générale, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Barclays, United Bank of Switzerland and Rabobank.

Here is a list of some of the banks in which the Bank Lords fixed FX rates and are currently negotiating fine amounts with the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA): Citigroup, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, JP Morgan and United Bank of Switzerland.

HSBC had to pay nearly $2B in fines after its Bank CEO was allegedly caught overseeing the laundering of $7B in drug money for the notoriously violent and ruthless Sinaloa drug cartel among other Mexican drug cartels and committing a wide array of other crimes like laundering $290MM from Russian mobsters that told HSBC bankers that their vast profits came from a “used car business”. I say “allegedly caught”, because every time this happens, the bank CEO, in this case, HSBC CEO Stuart Gulliver, inevitably denies ever knowing that the cartel he was overseeing was laundering dirty blood money. The Bank Lords issue these ridiculous denials despite the fact that every independent investigator not on a Bank’s payroll that investigates banks’ money laundering schemes arrive at the same conclusion as Jose Luis Marmolejo, the former head of the Mexican attorney general’s financial crimes unit:

“[The money laundering] went on too long and [the bank CEOS] made too much money not to have known.”

And what about HSBC’s $2B assessed fine for laundering this blood money? In response to meaningless fines like this that never change banker behavior, Martin Woods, former senior anti-money laundering officer at Wachovia bank, implored,

“What does the settlement do to fight the cartels? Nothing – it doesn’t make the job of law enforcement easier and it encourages the cartels and anyone who wants to make money by laundering their blood dollars. Where’s the risk? There is none.“

That is why HSBC is not the only cartel that houses bankers who have been caught laundering blood money in recent years. Wachovia Bank, Citigroup, Banco Santander, and Bank of America bankers have all been caught leading their banks in participation of this dirty deed as well. According to Paul Campo, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s financial crimes unit, drug traffickers used Bank of America to finance their drug smuggling operations for 10 tons of cocaine and laundered drug money through Bank of America accounts in Atlanta, GA, Chicago, IL, and Brownsville, TX from 2002 to 2009.

So how do Bank Lords get away with their dirty deeds scot-free? This month, explosive evidence contained in 47.5 hours of secret recordings from Goldman Sachs whistleblower and former New York Federal Reserve employee Carmen Segarra provides the answers we already knew. Bank Lords have been buying off judges and regulators after already buying off cops (JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon “Gifts” Largest Donation Ever to NYPD of $4.6MM). When Fed regulators asked Segarra to alter minutes of meetings in which Goldman Sachs bankers’ immoral behavior was discussed in order to cover up the truth and to lie about the content of these meetings, Segarra decided to secretly record her meetings with her bosses. Below are some of the revelations contained in the transcripts of those secret recordings: In one meeting Segarra attended, a Goldman employee expressed the view that

“once clients are wealthy enough, certain consumer laws don’t apply to them.”

After that meeting, Segarra turned to a fellow Fed regulator and expressed how surprised she was by that statement — to which the regulator replied, “You didn’t hear that.”When Segarra discovered multiple conflicts of interest in Goldman Sachs deals between Goldman Sachs bankers and their clients that led to deals being struck that would be the equivalent of insider trading in the stock market and consequently discovered Goldman Sachs had no “conflict of interest” policy, her boss harassed her and demanded of Segarra, “Why do you have to say there’s no policy?”

When Segarra complained to her legal and compliance manager, Jonathon Kim, of how her discoveries were being handled and told Kim that

“even when I explain to [my superiors at the New York Federal Reserve] what my evidence is, they won’t even listen”

, Kim reacted in an equally morally bankrupt manner as Segarra’s superiors, advising Segarra “to be patient” and to “bite her tongue.” So now that we know that Bank Lords buy out morally-challenged regulators, cops and judges in return for carte-blanche to continue committing crimes, rig markets to collect undeserved and unearned kickbacks, and launder drug cartel money from violent cartels that murder 10,000 people a year (the Sinaloa drug cartel), is there really even a line in the sand that separates Bank Lords and Drug Lords, or have Bank Lords become the new Drug Lords?bank lords are the new drug lords


Let’s take a closer look into the increasingly similar worlds of drug cartel and bank cartels. The last market bubble will not be the Chinese or Thai real estate bubble, the US stock market, the US student loan bubble or the Social Media bubble. If we take a look at the political cartoon to the left, drawn more than a century ago in 1907, we find that Bank CEOs have been engaging in the same nefarious deeds ever since they were able to put the global banking system on the fractional reserve banking platform. Banker immorality, having multiplied and grown for over a century, will be the last bubble to pop. To illustrate what I am talking about, let me pose this singular question:

“Is it possible to prove that a notoriously violent Drug Lord provided more positive value to society during his reign of terror than criminal Bank Lords like Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein & Stuart Gulliver are providing during theirs?”

If we can make a strong case for a Drug Lord providing more social value and benefits than the largest Bank CEOs in the world, all else being equal, then this is the point when we know our future is dire, especially if we refuse to collectively revolt right now against the very banking system that enslaves us.At first you may think that my aforementioned question is a ludicrous question. After all, how can the positive social benefits provided by a violent, murderous Drug Lord possibly exceed the social benefits, as non-existent as they may be, provided by the heads of the largest bank crime syndicates? Before we dismiss this question, let’s seriously explore it and see what conclusions we may draw from this exercise.

Every large drug cartel in the world, whether it was Pablo Escobar’s infamous Colombian Medellín cartel in the 1980s or El Chapo Guzman’s notorious Mexican Sinaloa cartel of today, has required the logistical support of a sophisticated banking division not just to survive, but to truly thrive. In fact, without the support of a large global Bank CEO, the largest drug cartels in the world would quickly crash and burn and the Drug Lords would disappear. As we explain in the next section, it is simple to conclude that without the consent and help of global Bank CEOs, the world’s largest drug cartels would not be viable. In the 1980s through the early 1990s, Pablo Escobar chose the Italian Banco Ambrosiano and allegedly the Vatican Bank as well to launder billions of his dirty money, while in more contemporary times, El Chapo Guzman handpicked HSBC Bank USA as his preferred bank to launder his billions. Murder and Crime: Drug Cartels v. Global BanksDuring his reign of terror, Pablo Escobar ordered the murder of an estimated 4,000 people, including hundreds of police officers, judges, lawyers, journalists and anyone that dared to oppose his violent drug cartel. Escobar even allegedly tortured his own associates that proved to be disloyal to him. However, of the thousands of murders committed by Pablo’s cartel, it was likely that he did not commit the murders himself. Drug Lords are notoriously careful about committing homicidal acts that would provide the evidence prosecuting attorneys need to put them behind bars for a very long time. It is more than likely that a man like Pablo Escobar paid others to carry out his murders for him. However, Banco Ambrosiano and Vatican Bank executives, if they did indeed knowingly launder Pablo’s billions as has been alleged, share a significant measure of complicity in Pablo’s murders. Without having a bank to launder his money, there would have been no reason for Escobar to continue operating his cocaine cartel and murdering the people that opposed him.

Likewise, one can successfully argue that HSBC CEO Stuart Gulliver and top HSBC bankers enabled many more murders than even Escobar. The Mexican drug cartels, whose money HSBC laundered, have murdered an estimated 80,000 people since 2006 (10,000 murders between 2008 and 2012 by the Sinaloa drug cartel alone), far more murders than Escobar’s empire ever carried out. Even though Banco Ambrosiano and HSBC Bank CEOs were not directly giving the orders to murder people, you must connect the dots between the Bank CEOs that launder drug cartel money and the crimes committed by these drug cartels because the dots can NOT be separated. Both actions are inextricably linked to one another, and without the services of money laundering willingly provided by the bank CEOs, the 80,000 murders committed by the Mexican drug cartel criminals would not occur.

Former anti-money laundering officer Martin Woods wholly supports the above argument:

“Is it in the interest of the American people to encourage both the drug cartels and the banks in this way? Is it in the interest of the Mexican people? It’s simple: if you don’t see the correlation between the money laundering by banks and the 30,000 people killed in Mexico (actually, 80,000 people have been killed in the Mexican drug wars since 2006), you’re missing the point.”

After presenting evidence to Wachovia bank executives of their employees willingly laundering drug traffickers’ blood money, to which Wachovia bank executives responded by telling him to shut up and by trying to get him fired, Woods understandably quit his position with Wachovia in disgust, stating,

“It’s the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy.”

Here is a list of complaints Woods filed with the UK House of Commons, including accusations that the very regulatory agency that was supposed to aid his investigations to uncover truth, the UK Financial Services Authority (FSA), worked more against him than with him to clean up the crimes of the banking industry.The only redeeming excuse that HSBC, Citigroup, Wachovia, and other Bank CEOs may have (that have collectively laundered billions upon billions of drug cartel blood money) is a proven ignorance of these activities occurring within their banking operations. However, as I previously stated, this excuse as a legitimate one is extremely unlikely. An abundance of journalists and law enforcement agencies that have studied internal bank documents to understand the complexity of drug laundering operations of big global banks always reach the same conclusion. US Customs Agent Robert Mazur and Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández, after years of meticulous research, both concluded that bankers at the highest levels of the drug-laundering bank – the CEOs, COOs, and CFOs – all know about these operations beyond any reasonable doubt and that ignorance of these immoral and illegal activities is nearly impossible.

When I worked as a Private Banker for a large global banking firm many years ago, the top policy that was always stressed for all accounts, but in particular, any account that involved a steady stream of large and frequent cash deposits, was KYC, or Know Your Client. It was absolutely incumbent upon the banker to visit the operations, and “kick the tires” per se, of any account that generated large cash deposits to confirm the legitimacy of the cash flow. If the source of these large cash deposits could not be determined, then all such accounts were to be immediately terminated. Thus when men like HSBC CEO Stuart Gulliver profess complete ignorance of laundering billions of cash for drug cartels, I have to concur with Mazur and Hernández’s assessment, as the top experts in money laundering schemes, that it would have been nearly impossible for Gulliver not to know.In conclusion, I would place Escobar in the category of “violence inflicted upon society”, just slightly above global Bank CEOs because the drug lords are the ones giving the direct orders to murder tens of thousands while Bank CEOs are only enabling these murders through their drug laundering operations. However, banks must receive a black mark for willingly participating in extremely profitable, criminal drug laundering operations that leave a trail of tears and misery, as people like Martin Woods, Robert Mazur and Anabel Hernánde have all made it crystal clear through their work that it is near impossible for a Bank CEO not to willingly approve these types of extremely profitable operations that create tens of thousands of homicides.

Furthermore, the comparison between Bank Lords and Drug Lords is made even more apropos when we examine some of the “turf wars” Bank Lords engage in when committing their crimes. Drugs never leave a drug-infested neighborhood when a corner dealer or even a regional distributor is murdered. Rather, a competing Drug Lord will fill the void left by a competitor’s demise and opportunistically expand his criminal empire by providing product distribution in regions where a void may develop. Likewise, when Deutsche Bank was recently forced to vacate one of the 12 seats in the gold & silver rigging game in London, Citigroup swooped in and took control over Deutsche Bank’s vacated turf. Quality of Life/Social Contributions: Drug Cartels v. Global BanksCocaine cartel Drug Lord Pablo Escobar, at the height of his cartel, was believed to have supplied an astounding 75% of the entire world’s cocaine, as strong a monopoly on cocaine as is the US military-protected Afghan poppy fields that recently supplied between 95% to 98% of all heroin distribution today. Pablo’s cocaine empire was so far reaching that Roberto Escobar, one of Pablo’s closest brothers, estimated Pablo’s annual profits to be in the range of $20 billion a year. According to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs, in 1982, cocaine usage peaked in the United States at about 10.5 million users. Historically, the US has accounted for roughly 40% of all global cocaine users. Using these figures, we can roughly estimate total global recreational cocaine use at 26.25 million users at the height of cocaine’s popularity in the early 1980s. Now let’s factor in the worst possible case scenario for every single one of these 26.25 million cocaine users. Let’s assume, in the worst possible case scenario, that not a single one of them was a functional recreational cocaine user and that every single one of these global cocaine users caused stress and trouble for at least 10 other family members and friends, so that 26.25 million X 10, or 262 million people were adversely affected in some social manner by cocaine users. Since Escobar supplied 75% of all cocaine users at the peak of his operations, in a worst possible case scenario with ludicrous worst possible case assumptions, one would conclude that Escobar had a negative social impact on 75% of 262 million, or 196 million people, in this world. Now you may think to yourself, “Wow, that is a lot of people for one cartel to negatively affect” and you would be correct.But yet, if we compare the negative social value of Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel versus that of the criminal Central Bank cartel, it simply pales in both magnitude and lasting effect. In 1982, during the peak years of Escobar’s operations, the global population was about 4.6 billion people. The decisions that the Central Banking cartel made back then negatively affected not 196 million people as did Pablo’s empire under a worst-case scenario, but exceeded this worst-case scenario by 4,404,000,000 people. Why does the negative reach of the Central Banking cartel extend so much further than that of a drug cartel? To begin, the Central Banking cartel’s fractional reserve banking policies drain the purchasing power from the savings of every single person on on the planet – fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, and grandfathers.

Ever since their existence, Central Bankers have created massive amounts of new money through a process called fractional reserve banking that has created annual inflation rates that far exceed any annual cost of living adjustments (COLA) that any nation’s citizens receive from their employers.

Thus every year, the Central Banking cartel robs the wealth of every single man, woman and child on earth and deliberately makes every single human being’s life on this planet less enjoyable and more difficult.

To compare apples to apples, we simply use the 4.6 billion global population figure that existed at the height of Escobar’s drug empire to estimate the negative-reach of the Central Banking cartel. Fractional reserve banking policies employed by every global commercial banker on earth makes it impossible for large percentages of people that dwell in poverty to ever move out of poverty, and these policies adopted systemically by Bank CEOs in the global banking system cause millions of people worldwide to lose homes, jobs, and emotional stability.Most people don’t understand the above facts about fractional reserve banking policies because governments release bogus “official” inflation statistics through the banker-owned press and media. For example, in the US, the official government rate of inflation in September 2013 was 1.5% and was reported by the US government to be 1.6% for the entire 2013 fiscal year. However, the inflation rate in the US is only so low because, as ludicrous as this sounds, bankers literally have stripped out the largest components of inflation from the equation they use to calculate inflation. A comparable lie would be if you stripped out all components of heat from a heat index and reported that it was -30 Celsius at noon in the Saharan dessert during the hottest month of the year. If you take an honest equation for inflation, as others like John Williams of shadowstats.com have done, then we know inflation rates were more than 9%, or more than 6 times higher than the “official” US government inflation rate of 1.5%. In 2002, none other than the Chairman of the US Central Bank, Alan Greenspan, stated, “The price level in 1929 was not much different, on net, from what it had been in 1800. But in the two decades following the abandonment of the gold standard in 1933, the consumer price index in the United States nearly doubled. And in the four decades after that, prices quintupled. Monetary policy, unleashed from the constraint of domestic gold convertibility, had allowed a persistent over issuance of money.” In essence, Greenspan stated that in just 60 years, prices had increased by 10 times due to fraud committed by Central Bankers and their deliberate “persistent over issuance of money” - fraud that negatively affected every human being on Planet Earth.If you were a 20-year-old young adult that had just graduated college with a starting $30,000 a year salary in 1933, by 1993, just 60 years later, you would have to be earning an annual salary of $300,000 just for your salary to have the SAME purchasing power as your 1933 salary. In other words, you would have had no better a quality of life in terms of purchasing power, earning $300,000 a year in 1993 than you would have had earning just $30,000 a year in 1933 due to the Central Bank cartel’s destruction of currencies. Furthermore, since Alan Greenspan was using the bogus US government “official” rates of inflation to make his calculations, the above example I’ve provided actually UNDER-ESTIMATES the reality of the negative social impact of the Central Banking cartel as $300,000 1993 dollars would actually have LESS purchasing power than $30,000 1933 dollars. Of course, other tangibles such as better technology in 1993 versus 1933 would grant one a better overall quality of life, but technological advances that create improvements in quality of life are certainly not attributable to bankers.If you’re old enough to remember growing up in a time where your father was the sole breadwinner of your household, your mother stayed at home and raised you, you had 2, 3, or even 4 other siblings, and no one was ever without food or clothes and you were considered middle class, that “middle class” life today has all but vanished and has become extinct thanks to the global scam of fractional reserve banking. And we can all thank the criminal Central Bank cartel, as well as their shills and misinformation agents such as Warren Buffet, Charlie Munger, Bill Gates, Jamie Dimon, etc. for this new, much more miserable reality. It amazes me that even when ex-bankers like Greenspan make admissions of their criminal negative impact upon society, that those working within the banking industry still refuse to process the inherently immoral nature of the crime syndicate for whom they work, such is the utter success of bankers’ centuries-old propaganda campaigns. Economic/GDP Contributions, Drug Cartels v. Global BanksLet’s assume that the creation of debt has a net negative overall affect on society (as debt creation drains the wealth of individuals) while the creation of GDP has a net positive affect on society. In the past 15 years, G7 Central Bankers created $7 of debt for every $1 of GDP that they contributed to society, resulting in a net negative [-$6] contribution. In the late 1980s through the early 1990s, drug lord Pablo Escobar “came to control 75 percent of the global [cocaine] market, with [drug] revenues from trafficking equivalent to [a positive] +5 percent share of the country’s GDP.” (Source: Garcio -Bario, Constance. “U.S. War on Drugs in Colombia is Ravaging Farmers and Land”, 2 March 2004. Common Dreams Newscenter). In fact, Pablo Escobar always declared, at every opportunity afforded him, his belief that he was helping Colombia’s economy more than he was hurting it: “The entire economy benefits from drug money; those who traffic and those who do not. If a drug trafficker builds a house, the peasant who cuts the wood for it benefits from that.” Unfortunately, it is exactly this flawed belief of Escobar’s that valued money over all other factors, including morality, that the vast majority of today’s global Bank CEOs have embraced. Though there is no honor in the above statement, whether you agree with it or not, in regards to economic contributions to society, it is obvious that Escobar’s drug cartel produced far more value in terms of GDP for society than bank cartels. Goodwill, Drug Cartels V. Global BanksPablo Escobar, during the height of his drug cartel’s success, was credited with being directly responsible for pulling thousands of his countrymen out of poverty and providing them with jobs. With his billions of drug cartel money, Escobar built schools, hospitals, fútbol fields, and churches and even sponsored many little-league community fútbol teams. Escobar even built housing developments with his blood money and gave thousands of units to poor people rent-free. Of course, these actions were not all altruistic by any means as Pablo’s dealers also were known for widely distributing cocaine in the same housing developments that Escobar built for the poor. Thus, by giving away these apartments, Escobar was ensuring himself of a steady supply of customers.

Despite these obvious contradictions, for all the goodwill that Pablo generated in Colombia, he was revered by thousands in his country as a saint during the height of his empire and still is today. However, to many others, he was and still is a monster.While I am sure that Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, Brian Moynihan, Stuart Gulliver, Michael Corbat, Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Peter Zöllner, Christine Lagarde, Mario Draghi, and Mark Carney have all made sizeable donations in their communities at some point and to civic-minded organizations like hospitals and schools and the arts, their more prominent donations seem to be to the police state that can ensure that their rule of corruption will continue. JP MorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon’s well–publicized 2011 $4.6 million payoff to the New York Police Department coincided with a violent police crackdown on Occupy Wall Street protests of Wall Street’s biggest and most corrupt banks, including JP Morgan. Never in a thousand years would hundreds of thousands of the poorest people in any community anywhere in the world call Bernanke, Saint Ben, Blankfein, Saint Lloyd, Moynihan ,Saint Brian, or Dimon, Saint Jamie.

Exploring this topic exposes the ludicrous nature of the inseparable relationship between Drug Lords and Bank Lords. If Bank CEOs did not launder Pablo’s money, Pablo would not have been able to build his schools, churches, medical facilities, homes and community recreational centers. Thus, are Bank CEOs contributing to society because they enable Drug Lords to provide thousands of jobs in their communities? Global Wars: Drug Cartels v. Global BanksIn the category of war and war crimes, who inflicts more harm upon humanity – Drug Lords or Bank CEOs? Though we know that Drug Cartels are drains on the financial resources and budgets of many governments worldwide due to the “War on Drugs” that governments wage upon them, these wars are limited in scope and finances, and are just a drop of water in the ocean when compared to the wars that are financed by Central Banks. Furthermore, the “War on Drugs” is a false war whose true purpose is not to eradicate drugs from neighborhoods but to enrich various parties involved in executing the War on Drugs, namely the military industrial complex, government officials and bankers. Criminal bank cartels are the first enablers of every major war in world history, and other than defense contractors, the largest war profiteers of any global industry.

In some instances, the Central Bankers are even alleged to have instigated and encouraged wars to fulfill their own political agendas.In Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (1966), Dr. Carroll Quigley, a Professor of History at Georgetown University, and US President Bill Clinton’s mentor, wrote:“[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the Central Banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.”Dr. Quigley stated that the key to the Banking Cartel’s success was to control and manipulate the currency supply of a nation while lying to and informing the public that their government was in control of the currency supply. Thus it is no coincidence that five countries the US has invaded in the last decade – Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Sudan – all are not member states of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Central Bank of Central Banks – while a sixth the US attempted to invade before being rebuffed by Russia’s Putin, Syria, is also NOT a member state of the BIS.Although many American children have falsely been taught in schools that the Revolutionary War started with a protest against prohibitive taxes on tea and stamps known as the Boston Tea Party, Benjamin Franklin correctly explained that it was the inability of the Colonists to get the power to issue their own money, permanently out of the hands of King George III and the international bankers, that was the prime reason for the Revolutionary War.

However Ben Franklin was incorrect about his perceived success of the American Revolutionary War, because the Rothschild banking families still maintained control over America’s currency supply after the so-called “revolutionary” war ended.French leader Napoleon Bonaparte stated:

“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.”

In response to Napoleon’s rich understanding of the nefarious objectives of powerful banking families, the Rothschild banking cartel funded the Franco-Prussian war to allegedly put an end to Napoleon’s rule of France.During the Civil War, US President Abraham Lincoln stated:

“The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.”

President Lincoln was murdered on April 14, 1865, less than two months before the Civil War ended.35th US President John F. Kennedy was intent on shutting down the US Federal Reserve and the IRS due to the same realizations of his predecessors that the Central Banking cartel was nothing more than a crime syndicate posing as a legitimate entity and signed Executive Order 1110 on June 4, 1963 that stopped the creation of US Federal Reserve Notes, removed the power of the Rockefellers, JP Morgan, Rothschilds, Warburgs, et al from creating currency in the United States, and returned the power of coining currency to the US Treasury, with the intent of forever retiring criminal fractional reserve currency from use inside the United States. Just five months later, JFK was murdered and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, immediately cancelled Executive Order 1110 and reinstated criminal fractional reserve banking in the United States.

To this day, the private banking families that own the US Federal Reserve are the principal financiers of all modern wars, including wars in Libya, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. , providing the war appropriation funding to governments for which governments must pay these bankers interest. When estimates of the US-Iraq War alone have been in the $2 trillion range, it is self-evident that bankers are making out like bandits from funding such wars. Furthermore, as Central Bankers create massive amounts of money (debt) out of thin air to fund major wars, it is self-evident that the creation of 2 trillion new dollars just to fund the Iraqi War has a hugely negative impact upon world citizens as it destroys the purchasing power of all existing dollars in circulation. In other words, every major war leaves the citizens of the nations involved in that war, as well as all global holders of the two currencies used in the warring nations, poorer and in a worse economic state.

Though it is beyond the scope of this article, if you research current global geopolitical tensions between Russia, China and the US by following the trail of money, you will discover that this too has originated from disputes over the desire of Federal Reserve bankers to maintain US dollar hegemony and to prevent the petro-Yuan from replacing the petro-dollar in international trade.

Furthermore though we have informed you earlier in this article that Pablo Escobar was believed to have been responsible for over 4,000 murders whereas El Chapo Guzman was believed to have been responsible for over 80,000 murders, these despicable inhumane statistics still pale in comparison to the more than 4,486 US soldiers killed, more than 1 million Iraqis killed, 3.5 to 5 million refugees, and 15 million Iraqis living in poverty, created from the singular US-Iraq War (Source: http://web.mit.edu/humancostiraq/).

Since Drug Wars to bring down Pablo Escobar don’t come anywhere close to creating the massive level of debt from just one war that Central Banks fund, nor do they come close to the numbers of murders that intense political wars cause, it is apparent that not even Drug Lords can compete with Bank Lords when it comes to spreading misery through the vehicle of global war.Just a hundred years ago, it was common knowledge among the people that any war in which their leaders entangled them was going to cheapen the currency held in their savings, and consequently, the majority of people always fiercely contested every war and insisted on diplomacy over war whenever possible.

Today, it is a sad state of affairs when bankers, through the vehicle of nationalism, have been able to convince people to cheer for their own economic demise, as state announcements of war against other nations are often met with zombie-conditioned, nationalistic chants of “[insert country name here]” versus the thoughtful intelligent protests over currency devaluations that used to meet every single build-up to war just a couple of generations ago.

In conclusion, we have summed up the societal value of a drug cartel like Pablo Escobar’s cocaine empire versus the societal value of Global Banking/ Central Banking Crime Syndicates in the below chart.do global bank CEOs do more harm to society than drug lords?In every category above, the Drug Lord causes less damage to humanity than Bank Lords. When the negative social value of a violent murderous Drug Lord can be successfully argued to be far less than the negative social value created by a sociopathic Bank Lord, we have truly reached the crossroads to determine our future. Either we all stand united and take action starting today to topple the current immoral and misanthropic global banking system, or we resign ourselves, our children and our grandchildren to another century of slavery and tyranny.

The collective choice is ours to make.If you really care about the future of this world and the future of your children and grandchildren, I implore you to please send this article to every single person you know that works for a large global bank to enlighten them about the atrocious, horrific crimes that are being committed by their leaders. Robert Mazur, an anti-money laundering expert that works closely with US law enforcement agencies is on record as stating that

“the only thing that will make the [bank CEOs] properly vigilant to what is happening is when they hear the rattle of handcuffs in the boardroom.”

As there could not have possibly been a stronger, air-tight case made in the favor of pre-meditation and prior knowledge of money laundering against HSBC CEO Stuart Gulliver and other top executive HSBC bankers, and even this “can’t fail” case failed to jail any HSBC banker,

it is obvious that the only way to stop the crimes of the new Bank Lords is through grass-roots activism.

As I have repeatedly stated in this article,

when the Bank CEOs know that there is zero risk of going to jail, even after they are caught, or of suffering any negative repercussions from continuing to bathe in blood money, they will never cease engaging in the types of crimes that drags the world further into darkness

.

And even if Nanex’s Eric Scott Hunsader did say tongue-in-cheek that he would

“put everything he had in Goldman Sachs because these guys can do whatever they want”

after listening to the secret tapes whistleblower Carmen Segarra made of her conversations with her bosses and between her colleagues and Goldman Sachs executives, there are surely a lot of people that will act on such knowledge to help these Bank CEOs become even more powerful and wealthy (i.e. buying their stock instead of divesting, closing deals with them, etc.).

In fact, today’s Bank Lords enjoy a level of special immunity from prosecution against their crimes that no Drug Lord in history ever was able to secure, and this makes the Bank Lords even more powerful than the Drug Lords they are replacing in the global crime syndicate. And this is why only we can really force significant change and stop the transformation of the big bank CEOs into the next Pablo Escobars and El Chapo Guzmans. Please participate in raising awareness about this extremely important issue and help us to light up the darkness by sending this article to every friend or acquaintance you know that works for a large global bank and ask them to follow their consciousness and morality.About the author: JS Kim is the Managing Director of SmartKnowledgeU, a fiercely independent investment research, consulting and education firm.

Learn how to combat banking corruption with targeted wealth preservation strategies and read our SmartWealth fact sheet to learn how you can win a free membership to our newest service, the SmartKnowledgeU SmartWealth Progra (an alternative educational program that breaks down how global capital markets really operate), coming soon. Follow us on Twitter, subscribe to ourYouTube Channel and join our LinkedIn group.


https://smartknowledgeu.com/blog/2014/0 ... rug-lords/

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Crime rates in Canada drop but cost of crime rises to $85 billion in one year

Media Contacts: Paul Brantingham
Stephen T. Easton
Release Date: October 16, 2014
VANCOUVER—Despite a decline in the crime rate, crime cost Canadians $85 billion in 2009 (the latest year with comprehensive data) including $47 billion incurred by crime victims, finds a new study released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.

The study, The Cost of Crime in Canada: 2014 Report (link at end of this post), measures the overall costs of police, courts, prisons, rehabilitation and education. And the varied costs incurred by crime victims due to stolen or damaged property, crime prevention, lost health and productivity, and less tangible costs associated with anger, frustration and fear.

“Unfortunately crime is a fact of life, but to understand whether we spend too little or too much on fighting crime, we need to understand the full costs,” said Stephen Easton, Fraser Institute senior fellow, professor of economics at Simon Fraser University, and lead author of the study.

Although the Canadian crime rate fell 27 per cent between 2002 and 2012, crime costs increased dramatically.

For example, policing costs jumped 43 per cent from $8 billion in 2002 to $11.5 billion in 2012, while corrections costs (prison, parole, etc.) rose 32 per cent from $3.6 billion to $4.8 billion over the same period. Additionally, the cost of legal aid for people who can’t afford legal representation in criminal cases rose from $322.1 million (2012 dollars) in 2002 to $430.7 million in 2012.

The study also found that while the number of criminal cases completed in Canadian courts over the past 15 years has remained relatively stable, the proportion of cases taking more than a year to complete doubled from eight per cent to more than 16 per cent. For example, the proportion of homicide cases that took more than a year to complete rose from 10 per cent in 1994/95 to 49 per cent in 2009/10.

“The costs of crime are rising in part because the Supreme Court of Canada has imposed a set of evolving requirements on the police and prosecutors that make it more expensive to capture and prosecute criminals,” Easton said.

While the study examines the overall cost of crime in Canada, it pays special attention to crime victims, outlining victim profiles based on crime statistics.

For example, the average age of a violent crime victim is 32. Approximately 50 per cent of attempted murder and robbery victims are under the age of 24. Most other violent crimes and property crimes (i.e. vehicle theft) disproportionately affect Canadian males (for example, 64 per cent of assault victims are male), yet approximately 72 per cent of sexual assault victims are female.

“As Canadians, we must ensure that our criminal justice system works fairly and efficiently—crime victims deserve nothing less,” Easton said.

“When making spending decisions on crime prevention, prosecution and punishment, governments across Canada need to clearly understand the potential effect of those decisions, for the sake of taxpayers, crime victims and their families.”

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/research ... x?id=21877

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/uploaded ... a-2014.pdf COST OF CRIME

(advocate comments: University studies by reputable experts put the cost of investment deception and the taking advantage of the vulnerability of consumers by giant banks and investment dealers, at more than $25 billion dollars JUST in the area of mutual fund products alone. (Link to 2007 Canadian U of T study “The $25 Billion Dollar Pension Haircut”, here:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzE_LMPDi9UOYTJiY2NmMDEtM2Y4ZS00OTBjLWE3ZjUtNGYxODAzZjkyOTkw/edit

Adding in things like exempt market securities (billions), and toxic investment products which receive a free pass (legal exemption) from the Securities Acts adds in billions more. (Sub-prime Asset Backed Commercial Paper in Canada alone pocketed $35 billion of Canadians money) These the tip of the iceberg. It leads one to conclude that investment firms in Canada are doing as much financial damage to Canada using deceptive or fraudulent practices, as the economic damage done by each and every other crime in the country combined. No wonder there is so much "distraction" on TV, the financial powers have a lot to cover up……:) See various articles and studies further in this topic for similar views……for example the next article by financial journalist Paul Farrell of Marketwatch saying this:

"10 ways Wall Street skims $100 billion of your money"

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May 16, 2014, 12:01 a.m. EDT
10 ways Wall Street skims $100 billion of your money
Commentary: Stop paying excessive fees, do your own investing

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Wake up America, you’re wasting your money paying big advisory fees for hot tips on the stock-market casino. The Wall Street Journal just hammered home my point with this scary comparison:



Big advisory fees cost Americans $100 billion a year in lost profits.

Put $200,000 in stock ETFs averaging 0.04% fees and you’d have $2.0 million for retirement in three decades. But put the same $200,000 in mutual funds charging the industry average annual fee of 1.25%? You’d only have $1.4 million in 30 years.

Get it? You’d lose $600,000. You’d have $600,000 less for retirement. You’d lose but some clever advisers would pocket your $600,000 into their retirement accounts.

Wake up! It’s time to do it yourself, invest and manage your assets without paying big fees for advice. Why? Most of Wall Street’s advice is not only too costly, it’s unconscionable and usually not worth much. To see why, read these 10 warnings and tips:

1. The one big secret to successful investing—low expenses

If you remember nothing else, burn this into your brain. When we published “The Lazy Person’s Guide to Investing” one of the most valuable tips was from a study the Financial Research Corporation did for the industry insiders. They studied five fund categories: domestic equities, international-global, corporate bonds, government bonds and tax-free securities. Eleven predictors were tested: Past performance, Morningstar ratings, expenses, turnover, manager tenure, net sales, asset size, and four risk/volatility measures, alpha, beta, standard deviation and the Sharpe ratio.

Conclusion: only one had any predictive value: the expense ratio. All other predictors turned out to be unreliable, including Morningstar’s ratings and the Sharpe Ratio developed by a Nobel economist. Bottom line: pick cheap funds, no-load index funds.

2. American investors are losing over $100 billion annually to Wall Street

The financial industry has no moral compass, no integrity. You can’t trust them. Their total focus on getting rich is reflected in Jason Zweig’s Journal column, “Investors: How Dumb Are You?”: “The average investor in all U.S. stock funds earned 3.7% annually over the past 30 years.” That’s a third of the S&P 500’s 11.1% annual returns. Yes, stock funds have underperformed the market about “7.4 percentage points annually for three decades, according to Dalbar, a financial-research firm in Boston that has updated this oft-cited study each year since 1994.”

Yes, you lose $600,000. But Wall Street’s casino just keeps scamming your funds. Yes, massive sums of money. The S&P 500’s total capitalization is $16.7 trillion. So with Wall Street skimming 7.4% annually, American investors are losing over $100 billion from their retirement portfolios every year.

3. Vanguard’s Bogle warns: Wall Street is a rigged casino, get out

So why do Wall Street, all the mutual fund managers and the entire financial-advice industry get away with running what amounts to a rigged casino? More importantly: Why do so many of America’s 95 million investors let them get away with it? Vanguard’s Jack Bogle has been asking these questions for decades. In his classic, “The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism,” Bogle called this loss of a moral compass, “mutant capitalism.” He sees financial markets as a gambling casino with millions of “croupiers” manipulating the gaming tables 24/7, skimming billions off the top.

4. Advisers have no stock-picking skills

Actually it’s worse. Nobel economist Daniel Kahneman also used the casino metaphor in “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” Based on “50 years of research” he found that the “stock-picking skills” of managers and advisers is “more like rolling dice than like playing poker.” Their picks are no more “accurate than blind guesses.” In fact, “this is true for nearly all stock pickers ... whether they know it or not ... and most do not.”

5. Markets are notoriously unpredictable, irrational and dangerous

Wharton School of Finance economist Jeremy Siegel, author of “Stocks for the Long Run: The Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns and Long-Term Investment Strategies,” researched 120 of the biggest up and biggest down days in the stock market over the last two centuries. Guess what? In only 30 of those big-move days did Siegel find any reasons for the market’s movement. In other words, 75% of the market’s biggest twists and turns in history were irrational and unpredictable black swans. Wall Street’s just guessing.

6. The more you actively trade, the less you earn

You think trading will bring you bigger profits, peace of mind for retirement? Nope. For six years University of California behavioral finance professors Terry Odean and Brad Barber researched 66,400 portfolios with a big Wall Street firm. They found three key factors that resulted in substantially reducing investor returns: transaction costs, stock-picking skills and taxes. Active traders averaged 258% portfolio turnover annually. But they earned seven percentage points less annually than buy-and-hold investors whose average turnover was a mere 2%.

7. Online trading makes it easier to lose, faster and even more

Another Odean-Barber study shows that investors who converted from off-line to online trading saw their returns drop substantially. Before going online they were beating the market by 2%. Afterwards they were losing, under the market by 3%. Stay out. Before one of the largest online discount brokers, Ameritrade, went public, the founder, billionaire Joe Ricketts, told Fortune: “The best thing, really, for an investor to do is buy a good company and hold it ... Trading often and heavy is not something that makes you a lot of money. That’s contrary to my own interests, but it is the truth.”

8. Investors encouraged to buy high/sell low, losing at top and bottom

Your trading and stock-picking skills are probably as bad your adviser’s. A key Morningstar study concluded that investors tend to get in and out of the market at the wrong time, buy high, sell low and lose. They go in at the top. Get out at the bottom. Irrational exuberance creates a buying frenzy at the top. Investors jump in. They lose. Then hang in there as the market drops, buying on dips. More drops. Panic, fear sets in, they sell at the bottom. Lose. Warning, Playing in the market casino is a fool’s game, a waste of your time. Buy and hold … and hold.

9. Warning, your brain’s a saboteur and Wall Street’s manipulating it

One behavioral-finance study reported in Money magazine concluded that 88% of investors experience a phenomenon psychologists call “optimism bias,” overconfidence. Then, we make bad investment decisions taking on too much risk, and lose. Then we hide that reality, lie to ourselves about how bad it wasn’t. Over half the overconfident investors who thought they were beating the market in the recent bull, were lying to themselves, underperforming by 5% to 15%. But could not admit failure. Our brains are too often our worst enemies.

10. Most stock market day traders really don’t make much money

Trading is not the get-rich-quick scheme that the overoptimistic newsletter gurus want you believe. Yes, you can trade online for a few bucks a pop. But you can still make lousy picks. Lose fast and furious. Other Odean-Barber research reveals that as many as three-quarters of traders lose money. And in the end even the rare successful trader rarely make more than $100,000 a year, averaging half that. As David Dreman put it in his “New Contrarian Investment Strategy,” “Market timers, if they don’t die broke, rarely beat the market.”

Even the best professionals don’t trust their own ability to predict the market. Like Ted Aronson. His firm manages a $24 billion institutional fund. But his family’s taxable money is invested in low-cost index funds, his Lazy Portfolio. Asked if investors should gamble in Wall Street casino, he said: “For good reasons and bad, I’d hold tight. The good include my faith in capitalism and its ability to weather a storm, even one of biblical proportions. The bad reason is, I have no faith in my ability to time this sort of thing. Even if I got out in time, I probably wouldn’t be able to correctly time getting back in!”

Yes, very simply, Wall Street is a high-risk gambling casino, where the house always wins. You can’t trust it. They are skimming over $100 billion from America’s 95 million Main Street investors every year. My advice to investors is stop paying your heard-earned money to advisers with no real stock-picking skills, whose advice is “more like rolling dice than like playing poker,” and no more “accurate than blind guesses.”

Take charge of your future, hone your own skills. You’ll save money, you’ll have a bigger nest egg for the future.


http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-way ... genumber=2

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TOP TEN SYSTEMIC FINANCIAL CRIMES IN CANADA

1. Did you know that when the "Minimum Sentences for White Collar Crime" Bill C21 was passed with this government, that investment bankers and those who deal in public markets were able to "delete" the section of the criminal code of Canada, as it applied to this very bill. They were able to "negate" the jail term provisions that might apply to public markets. I was in Ottawa, testifying on the bill when it was happening. see this video for a quick and dirty synopsis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Toem8yC0Fx4 1 minute 30 seconds

2. Were you aware that 13 securities commissions in Canada are 100% paid by investment industry fees and charges?

3. Did you know that in Alberta and Ontario that top Securities Commission people earn over $700,000 per year, and in Alberta the top four employees shared $2 million between them? For public employees?

4. Were you aware that securities commission officials will grant "exemptive relief" to our provincial laws, to securities dealers in order to sell defective, toxic products to consumers, or to give faulty advice, allowing dealers to make multiple-times more money?

5. Did you know that these exemptions are hidden from input and from view by the public who purchases the investments which are magically turned from illegal to legal with a securities lawyer's pen?

6. There are approximately 500 such exemptions granted by these securities commissions each year, and in no cases will the securities commission show cause, process, and proof of no harm to the public interest from these legal games.

7. More recently, "exempt market securities" have lifted over $2 billion from the hands of the public, into the hands of fraudsters. Secondary effects show that some well connected lawyers and accounting firms are realizing as much or more money from the "rubble" (receivership process) than even did the original fraudsters.

8. The largest crime in Canada was $35 billion gone in sub prime mortgage securities, which were illegal for sale in Canada, were it not for the saving grace of friendly securities regulators, who granted exemptive relief so these products could be sold, and Canadians victimized.

9. $2 billion was taken from the PSPP (the pension plan of retired judges and RCMP) at the same time that judges were granting "immunity" from prosecution to those responsible (I assume they do not know to this day, but the PSPP annual report for 2008 includes the write downs)

10. Regulators turn a blind eye daily to 150,000 investment salespersons in Canada, who do NOT carry the proper license nor fiduciary duty to call themselves "advisers", under the law, however by spelling their title "advisor" with an "o" rather than an "e", they may be able to skirt the spirit of this legal license category and fool the public into a false sense of trust. A University of Toronto study puts the harm to Canadians in just the retail sale of mutual funds alone, at about $25 billion each year gouged out of Canadians who are not aware of this "adviser/advisor bait and switch". video concept here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot-a2eF2zgQ one minute and 39 seconds

http://youtu.be/pVSopr_VvhQ and this one at 3 minutes length

I find myself rather blown away by the ability of the financial industry to "own" the media in Canada, with their advertising dollars, and I am seeking ways and means of working outside the box to get this info out to the public. It is certainly not as easy as simply pointing these things out. The media has a part to play in disclosure.

Thanks for any help you can be.

Cheers and best regards

larry

[admin]

Study: SEC Fiduciary Delay Costing Retirement Investors $1 Billion per Month

Two years ago, the SEC’s botched proposal for a uniform fiduciary standard was greeted with a uniform chorus of derision from both Congress and the brokerage industry. The biggest complaint was the alleged “cost” to investors should the SEC hold brokers to the same standard as it holds Registered Investment Advisers under the 1940 Investment Advisers Act. The SEC asked the industry to show evidence of this cost, but, sheltered by the bipartisan boos from the political realm, never seemed to provide the promised smoking gun. It turns out, a much publicized academic research study released last month may have finally supplied the much anticipated evidence of cost – but with a surprising twist.

The paper, “It Pays to Set the Menu: Mutual Fund Investment Options in 401k Plans,” (Pool, Veronika Krepely, Sialm, Clemens and Stefanescu, Irina, January 20, 2013), is the result of work done by researchers from Indiana University and the University of Texas at Austin. Much of the media reporting focused on the study’s confirmation of what many had long suspected: trustees who were allowed to engage in self-dealing transactions often do, and often at the worst possible time. Pool et al concluded trustees with a conflict of interest are more likely than unconflicted trustees to keep and to add poorer performing affiliated funds. Worse, employees continued to invest in these poorer performing options even though they had better alternatives.

This conclusion is similar to that drawn by “Broker Incentives and Mutual Fund Market Segmentation,” (Diane Del Guercio, Jonathan Reuter, Paula A. Tkac, NBER Working Paper No. 16312, August 2010). This paper found investors earned, on average, 1% more per year by buying mutual funds directly instead of through a broker (you can read the full report in our earlier story, “Does New Study Seal the Deal for Fiduciary Standard – or Just Warn Plan Sponsors?” FiduciaryNews.com, January 19, 2011). “Both studies look at agency problems in delegated portfolio management but they focus on very different aspects (brokers vs. 401k trustees),” says Irina Stefanescu, Assistant Professor of Finance at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and one of the co-authors of last month’s study.

The new study concentrates only on listed trustees. “We collected the names of the ‘plan trustees’ as they are disclosed in the 11-K,” says Stefanescu. “We have not focused on conflicted advisors.”

That conflicts-of-interest exist in the 401k service provider world isn’t surprising. “Unfortunately, it is quite common for mutual fund companies that also act a ‘non-discretionary’ plan trustee to encourage the use of their own proprietary funds,” Houston-based Robert A. Massa, Chief Investment Officer at Ascende Wealth Advisers, tells FiduciaryNews.com. He continues, “To address this problem, I take a considerable amount of time to educate the plan committee members on delineating the differences between the services provided by the plan recordkeeper, the plan trustee and the investment provider(s). Most committee members have a hard time understanding the difference. If they hire a mutual fund company to handle all plan services on a turn-key basis, it can be difficult for the committee members to fully understand the fees and services provided because of the one-stop shopping approach. But this is the core problem. In these fully-bundled, one-stop-shopping arrangements, employers can usually offer a 401k program with great educational materials and online technology, but if they fail to perform their due diligence, they can end up with a stable of funds that may underperform the market.”

“In an ideal world, all fiduciaries that act for a plan under the auspices of ERISA should operate independently,” says Gabriel Potter, Senior Researcher at Westminster Consulting, LLC in Rochester, New York. Potter adds, “Individual advisors acting as consultants may adopt the title of ‘fiduciary’ without really understanding the legal ramifications of the decision. Investment management firms often take up the fiduciary mantle when acting as a consultant, but may be incapable of separating themselves from the inherent conflict-of-interest. It is the advisors’ responsibility to understand if their duties preclude them from being a fiduciary adviser, but the roles of a fiduciary vs. a non-fiduciary individual advisor are sorely misunderstood, even by professionals.”

Making their conclusions even more dire, the study’s sample does not include conflicts-of-interest resulting from brokerage-based “advice.” Paula Hendrickson, Director Retirement Plan Consulting at First Western Trust in Denver, Colorado says, “Many plan sponsors join forces with a brokerage firm to develop their investment strategy and the broker has an inherent conflict-of-interest.”

But the study does reveal something that stunned even the researchers. “Perhaps the most surprising result was the future underperformance for the lowest performance decile funds,” says Stefanescu. The study concludes “We estimate that on average they underperform by approximately 3.6% annually on a risk-adjusted basis. This figure is large in and of itself, but its economic significance is magnified in the retirement context by compounding. Our results suggest that the trustee bias we document in this paper has important implications for the employees’ income in retirement.”

Just how economically significant is this result? FiduciaryNews.com asked Stefanescu if the authors came up with a dollar figure, but she told us, “Translating these percentages into dollars depends on various assumptions on holding periods and compounding horizons.” Still, that doesn’t prevent anyone from using published data to come up with a number.

And that’s precisely what we did.

According to the January 24, 2013 entry of January Market Size Blog, U.S. retirement assets (including IRAs, 401k plans and 403b plans) total $10.3 trillion at the end of the third quarter in 2012. The universe of trusteed plans in the “It Pays to Set the Menu” paper indicates 33% of the assets are held by “conflicted” trustees. We’ll assume this number for 403b plans and IRAs as a way of accounting for conflicted brokers. (Please note, the 33% number does not mean only 33% of the plans are advised by conflicted vendors, it only means the actual conflict occurs in only 33% of the assets. In other words, a conflicted adviser is likely to also put assets into unaffiliated funds.) A third of the total U.S. retirement assets is $3.4 trillion. Now, we take 10% of that reflecting the lower performing decile of funds and that’s equal to $340 billion. Finally, we take the average underperformance of 3.6% annually and you get $12.3 billion of lost performance each year.

That’s more than a billion dollars a month, or $24.6 billion since the adoption of a uniform fiduciary standard was first proposed.

That’s the real dollar price tag the SEC’s inaction is costing U.S. retirement investors. Go ahead. Check the math. Refine the assumptions. You’re still talking huge numbers.

Elle Kaplan, CEO & Founding Partner of Lexion Capital Management LLC in New York City explains the true tragedy of this wholly unnecessary delay as she expresses concern the indictment of studies like this might take the bloom off the rose of the 401k plan. She says, “Embedded in the term ‘conflict-of-interest’ is the key word: conflict. The fact these conflicts exist is a major problem and should be extremely troubling to all 401k plan advisers. If we are encouraging people to save for retirement, but then we give them options that are poor investment vehicles with bad returns, we are hurting the very people we are supposed to help. We are letting a few bad apples get in the way of delivering responsible options for retirement planning.”

If you enjoyed this article, you’d probably enjoy Mr. Carosa’s latest book, 401(k) Fiduciary Solutions. Published by Pandamensional Solutions, Inc., this highly recommended book contains 320 pages of insights from some of the industry’s most well-known thought leaders. 401(k) Fiduciary Solutions covers all 401k compliance issues in a single reference source. It is written for plan managers, sponsors and others with 401k plan fiduciary responsibilities. Click here to order it now direct from the publisher’s site on Amazon.com.

http://fiduciarynews.com/2013/02/study- ... gn=012214z

haircut

[admin]

If the average property crime in Canada carries a cost to society (I recall seeing this figure at Justice Canada or Stats Canada site) and there are some 90,000 property crimes each year.........then the sale of toxic sub prime mortgage investments in Canada was white collar crime equal to 6.4 million property crimes.

SIX POINT FOUR MILLION individual crimes..........or the financial equivalent of same......done by financial Mega Criminals, our own white collar banking and financial people, assisted by lawyers, accountants, regulators, and the usual cast of characters. Not one single criminal charge among the total.

Imagine if you could figure out how to commit the equivalent of six point four million crimes......and know that no one would ever get caught and no one would go to jail. (this was just one type of investment, non bank ABCP investments, and in no way reflects the total amount of financial damage done each and every year by these same Mega Criminals)

Lawyer Purdy Crawford (head of the ABCP restructuring process) went into court arguing for immunity from criminal and civil prosecution for the toxic sub prime mortgage paper collapse. He obtained immunity from civil prosecution for all involved, but did not receive immunity from criminal. ( he was also involved in the "largest crime in Canadian history", according to the RCMP, which resulted in a company he headed (Imperial Tobacco under Imasco Ltd) paying a $1 billion dollar fine for tobacco smuggling)

(Conrad Black was able to do the equivalent damage of 1200 or 12,000 property crimes, depending upon which amount of his crimes you work on, the amounts he was successfully prosecuted on, or the alleged amount he actually lifted. He was not able to be prosecuted in Canada, but had to be brought to justice by US authorities.)

RCMP IMET managed to bring together five (5) convictions for white collar crime by the IMET organization since it was began eight years ago, and in no case have I seen convictions, prosecutions, or even investigations undertaken on Mega Criminals beyond the $100 million mark.

My conclusion is that if you get yourself into the position of a Mega Criminal in Canada, (too big to prosecute), then financial crime is free from consequences. Unfortunately, this is not only the rantings of a more than slightly disturbed individual, but appears to be somewhat supported by the facts.

[admin]

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"Self Regulation is De-criminalization"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/busin ... wanted=all
As Wall St. Polices Itself, Prosecutors Use Softer Approach

Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times
“Traditionally, a bank would tell the Department of Justice when an employee engaged in crimes, but what do you do when the bank itself is run by a criminal enterprise?” said Solomon L. Wisenberg, former chief of a Justice Department financial institutions fraud unit.
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON and LOUISE STORY
Published: July 7, 2011


As the financial storm brewed in the summer of 2008 and institutions feared for their survival, a bit of good news bubbled through large banks and the law firms that defend them.


Matt York/Associated Press
Beazer Homes ran afoul of the Department of Housing and Urban Development over its mortgage practices. But the Justice Department came to an agreement with the company, ending HUD's inquiry.


Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times
"They threatened the HUD office of the inspector general that we would not be allowed to go forward with our investigation of executives if we didn’t agree to their settlement," said Kenneth M. Donohue, former inspector general of HUD, speaking about the Justice Department.
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Federal prosecutors officially adopted new guidelines about charging corporations with crimes — a softer approach that, longtime white-collar lawyers and former federal prosecutors say, helps explain the dearth of criminal cases despite a raft of inquiries into the financial crisis.

Though little noticed outside legal circles, the guidelines were welcomed by firms representing banks. The Justice Department’s directive, involving a process known as deferred prosecutions, signaled “an important step away from the more aggressive prosecutorial practices seen in some cases under their predecessors,” Sullivan & Cromwell, a prominent Wall Street law firm, told clients in a memo that September.

The guidelines left open a possibility other than guilty or not guilty, giving leniency often if companies investigated and reported their own wrongdoing. In return, the government could enter into agreements to delay or cancel the prosecution if the companies promised to change their behavior.

But this approach, critics maintain, runs the risk of letting companies off too easily.

“If you do not punish crimes, there’s really no reason they won’t happen again,” said Mary Ramirez, a professor at Washburn University School of Law and a former assistant United States attorney. “I worry and so do a lot of economists that we have created no disincentives for committing fraud or white-collar crime, in particular in the financial space.”

While “deferred prosecution agreements” were used before the financial crisis, the Justice Department made them an official alternative in 2008, according to the Sullivan & Cromwell note.

It is among a number of signs, white-collar crime experts say, that the government seems to be taking a gentler approach.

The Securities and Exchange Commission also added deferred prosecution as a tool last year and has embraced another alternative to litigation — reports that chronicle wrongdoing at institutions like Moody’s Investors Service, often without punishing anyone. The financial crisis cases brought by the S.E.C. — like a recent settlement with JPMorgan Chase for selling a mortgage security that soured — have rarely named executives as defendants.

Defending the department’s approach, Alisa Finelli, a spokeswoman, said deferred prosecution agreements require that corporations pay penalties and restitution, correct criminal conduct and “achieve these results without causing the loss of jobs, the loss of pensions and other significant negative consequences to innocent parties who played no role in the criminal conduct, were unaware of it or were unable to prevent it.”

The department began pulling back from a more aggressive pursuit of white-collar crime around 2005, say defense lawyers and former prosecutors, after the Supreme Court overturned a conviction it won against the accounting firm Arthur Andersen. That ended an era of brass-knuckle prosecutions related to fraud at companies like Enron.

Another example of this more cautious prosecutorial strategy: Government lawyers now go to companies earlier in an inquiry, and often tell companies to figure out whether improper activities occurred. Then those companies hire law firms to investigate and report back to the government. The practice was criticized last year when the Justice Department struck a settlement with Beazer Homes USA, a home builder accused of mortgage fraud.

This “outsourcing” of investigations — as some lawyers call it — has led to increased coziness between the government and companies, some critics say.

In banking, the collaboration is even stronger, dating to the mid-1990s when banks were asked to regularly report suspicious activities to the Treasury Department, an effort that aimed at relieving regulators of some of their enforcement loads. But it gave regulators a false assurance that banks would spot and report all wrongdoing, former investigators say. Moreover, companies are not as likely to come forward with evidence related to senior executives or to widespread patterns of misbehavior, some academics say.

Intended to make the most of the government’s limited investigative resources, the government’s cooperation with corporations and industry groups can work well and save money when business hums along as usual. But some veterans of government prosecutions question such collaboration in financial crisis cases, and contend they should have been pursued more aggressively.

“Traditionally, a bank would tell the Department of Justice when an employee engaged in crimes, but what do you do when the bank itself is run by a criminal enterprise?” said Solomon L. Wisenberg, former chief of the financial institutions fraud unit for the United States attorney in the Western District of Texas in the early 1990s. “You have to be able to investigate without just waiting for the bank to give you the referral. The people running the institutions are not going to come to the D.O.J. and tell them about themselves.”

A Clash of Agencies

Beazer Homes, based in Charlotte, N.C., became one of the nation’s 10 largest home builders in the 2000s — in large part because of mortgage lending options that attracted buyers. But its mortgage business eventually attracted prosecutors, too.

In March 2007, the inspector general and officials of the Department of Housing and Urban Development began investigating claims that Beazer had engaged in mortgage fraud, causing losses to the Federal Housing Administration’s insurance fund that covered mortgages when buyers couldn’t pay.

Investigators found that Beazer had been offering a lower mortgage rate if buyers paid an extra fee, but then not giving them the lower rate. And it was enticing homeowners by offering down payment assistance, but not disclosing that it then raised the price of the house by the same amount.

The Beazer board’s audit committee hired the law firm of Alston & Bird to conduct an internal investigation. Documents supplied to Congress by HUD show that Justice Department officials advised HUD investigators not to interview borrowers or former Beazer employees until Alston & Bird completed its review.

In April 2009, justice officials notified HUD that a deferred prosecution agreement with Beazer had been reached — the sort of deal that Sullivan & Cromwell had celebrated in its client memo a year earlier — essentially shutting down the HUD investigation.

Beazer agreed to pay consumers and the government as much as $55 million under the deal. It also paid approximately that amount to Alston & Bird, investigators found. While a member of the justice team told HUD that criminal proceedings would be forthcoming against individuals at Beazer, the documents show, there has been only one indictment: of Michael T. Rand, the company’s former chief accounting officer, whose trial is to begin this fall.

A year after the settlement, Kenneth M. Donohue, the inspector general of HUD at the time, raised questions about its handling. He said he was disturbed by the interference by the Justice Department and its calls to stop pursuing Beazer executives so the deferred prosecution deal could be completed. “As a law enforcement official for over 40 years,” Mr. Donohue wrote in a letter to Eric H. Holder Jr., the attorney general, “I have never witnessed a like action in any of my varied dealings.”

In a recent interview, Mr. Donohue, now a senior adviser at the Reznick Group, an accounting firm in Bethesda, Md., said of the Justice Department: “The most important point of this whole thing is the fact that they threatened the HUD office of the inspector general that we would not be allowed to go forward with our investigation of executives if we didn’t agree to their settlement.”

David A. Brown, acting United States attorney on the case, said: “What we do is work cooperatively as a team in conducting these investigations. We don’t tell agencies to stand down when they are working as part of the team.” He said that the investigation was continuing, and that the Justice Department was proud of the deferred prosecution agreement and the restitution Beazer paid, which more than covered the losses of the Federal Housing Administration fund.

Beazer did not respond to an e-mail, and Alston & Bird did not return a call seeking comment.

Ms. Finelli, the department’s spokeswoman, said that deferred or nonprosecution agreements had led to charges against individuals in many cases; of the 20 companies she cited, three were financial companies. But none were cases related to the financial crisis.

Still, some lawyers applaud the closer relationship between the government and business. “Given the scanty resources that have been committed to corporate crime enforcement, I think the government’s leveraging of its prosecution power from corporations and their lawyers has been critically important,” said Daniel C. Richman, professor of law at Columbia and a former assistant United States attorney in New York.

But Professor Richman added that the government should have “a much more developed, funded and empowered S.E.C., Federal Reserve, E.P.A. and other agencies to do regulation, to do enforcement and feed cases where necessary to criminal prosecutors.”

Changing Course

The names have become synonymous with corporate wrongdoing — and forceful prosecution: Not just Enron, but also WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, Rite Aid and ImClone. In the early part of the last decade, senior executives at all these companies were convicted and imprisoned.

But by 2005, a debate was growing over aggressive prosecutions, as some business leaders had been criticizing the approach as perhaps too zealous.

That May, Justice Department officials met ahead of a session with a cross-agency group called the Corporate Fraud Task Force. It was weeks after Justice Department lawyers had presented to the Supreme Court their case against Arthur Andersen, which was seeking — successfully, it would turn out — to overturn its criminal fraud conviction in a prominent case.

In the meeting, the deputy attorney general at the time, James B. Comey, posed questions that surprised some attendees, according to two people there who asked to remain anonymous because they were not supposed to discuss private meetings.

Was American business being hurt by the Justice Department’s investigations?, Mr. Comey asked, according to these two people, who said they thought the message had come from others. He cautioned colleagues to be responsible. “It was a total retrenchment,” one of the people said. “It was like we were going backwards.”

Mr. Comey said recently that he did not recall this conversation.

Around the same time, the Justice Department was developing instructions on dealing with companies under investigation — particularly companies that work with the government. It issued a memo in 2003 that gave companies more credit for cooperating than in the past. That message was reinforced in another memo in 2006.

As the first memo put it, “it is entirely proper in many investigations for a prosecutor to consider the corporation’s pre-indictment conduct, e.g., voluntary disclosure, cooperation, remediation or restitution, in determining whether to seek an indictment.”

During this period, the Justice Department increased the use of deferred prosecutions or even nonprosecution agreements.

Many well-known companies have benefited. In 2004, the American International Group, the giant insurer, paid $126 million when it entered a deferred prosecution agreement to settle investigations into claims that it had helped clients improperly burnish financial statements.

Deals over accounting improprieties also were struck that year by Computer Associates International, a technology company, and in 2005 by Bristol- Myers Squibb, a pharmaceutical concern. Prudential Financial entered into a deferred prosecution in 2006 over improper mutual fund trading.

No such prosecution deals for large banks have yet arisen out of the financial crisis. Some bank analysts say they may be coming. The government may eventually strike one with Goldman Sachs, which it continues to investigate for its mortgage securities dealings, Brad Hintz, a securities analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, wrote recently. “If an alleged violation is identified during a Goldman investigation, we expect a reasoned response from the Justice Department,” he added.

Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

The S.E.C. can also file deferred prosecutions, and it sometimes issues reports about wrongdoing in lieu of litigation. It has been increasing the number of reports it files, and is considering issuing one about misleading accounting at Lehman Brothers, Bloomberg News has reported. The S.E.C. did something similar last year to resolve a credit ratings investigation of Moody’s Investors Service. The reports from the commission are intended to give companies guidance on appropriate practices.

Such results provide bragging rights among corporate defense lawyers, according to longtime observers of the legal system.

“The corporate crime defense bar has this down to a science,” said Russell Mokhiber, the editor of Corporate Crime Reporter, a publication that tracks prosecutions. “I interview them all the time, and they boast about how they’ve gamed the system.”

Industry Advantage

Even as companies cooperate with the government, they also work closely with one another, creating industrywide strategies in response to investigations. Legal representatives for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and others talk regularly about what they hear from the government, according to lawyers in the industry. They have long held these conversations — known as joint-defense calls — but given the increased cooperation of the government with companies, lawyers can exchange more information.

Goldman’s recent battle against the S.E.C. — in which it agreed to pay $550 million to settle claims that it had misled investors in a mortgage security it sold — was helpful to other banks, according to one lawyer who participates in these calls. On several occasions in 2009 and 2010, after Goldman and its law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, visited the S.E.C., lawyers representing other banks received intelligence on the government’s areas of interest. The result has often been that banks walk into prosecutors’ offices well-prepared to rebut allegations.

One assistant United States attorney, who requested anonymity because he is not allowed to speak with the news media, said many inquiries had been tabled because banks had such good answers.

“They’ll hire a counsel who is experienced,” said the assistant attorney, who has direct knowledge of cases related to the financial crisis. “They often come in and make a presentation: ‘We’ve looked at this and this is how we see it.’ They’re often persuasive.”

Some defense lawyers say it is easier to make a persuasive case because prosecutors, having becoming more dependent on companies for investigative legwork, are less knowledgeable and thus less likely to counter with evidence they have uncovered.

The process, in the end, is cloaked, some critics say. The Justice Department does not disclose any details about its decision-making in specific cases, such as why it did not charge individuals at a company.

“We will not get an explanation of why there haven’t been prosecutions; at best, we will get a reference back to the Department of Justice manual that leaves the discretion to the prosecutors,” said Professor Ramirez of Washburn University. “The legal representatives will argue that since recoveries can be had by using civil measures, even private litigations, there’s no need to bring criminal measures. I disagree with that very much.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/busin ... wanted=all

[admin]

images.jpeg (13.95 KiB) Viewed 19506 times

According to the Canadian Anti Fraud Center (Calgary Herald Sat April 23, 2011), they recorded "$53 million lost due to mass market frauds such as spam email and telephone scams".

Most years I can come up with $35 billion quite easily lost due to predatory investment practices by investment "professionals" in Canada. $35 billion is "systemic", built into the profits of financial pros each year due to the distinct advantages or "decriminalization" that self regulation offers the industry.

First, $25 billion each year is gouged from mutual fund consumers due to monopolistic mutual fund selling and managing practices of the few largest institutions here in Canada. ( source THE $25 BILLION PENSION HAIRCUT, a study by pension expert Keith Ambaschteer, University of Toronto, Rotman School of Business, also backed up by mutual fund fees around the world joint studies done by London School of Economics, Harvard, and Georgia Tech)

Then add in $10 billion each year added costs of having thirteen provincial and territorial securities commissions in an economy the size of Texas. ($10 billion estimate from a study done by Columbia University Prof John Coffee) (do not even want to begin yet counting the damages done by these commissions as they are each paid by the securities industry, and appear to be rather beholden to same) (see http://www.albertafraud.com )

So we are at $35 billion each year, gouged from Canadians, about $1000 for each man, woman and child in the country. We have not even looked at a single security related fraud, such as a Bre-x ($8 billion), Non Bank ABCP ($32 billion), Nortel ($366 billion), ponzi-like income trusts, or any of the dozens of names found elsewhere in this forum. ( http://www.investoradvocates.ca ) We have not looked at the sales tricks of retail commission investment sellers, each and every one misrepresenting themselves as some kind of "pedigreed professional". Each one (four out of five, or nine out of ten depending on which product sold) placing their vulnerable clients into the most expensive investment products they can choose from, in a feeding frenzy of sales commission harvesting. (see tricks of the trade topic on http://www.investoradvocates.ca )

Please see some of the following non industry paid web sites for candid information about how your financial health is jeopardized by predatory financial professionals:

http://www.investoradvocates.ca
http://www.investorvoice.ca (read a few of the "cases" BEFORE you invest to see what banks are like "AFTER" they get caught, it aint pretty and it what they promise)
http://www.breachoftrust.ca a broker tells of his quest to find ethics and integrity inside the indsutry
http://www.albertafraud.com same broker tries to develop "accountability projects" designed to protect the public while holding criminals accountable for their actions (at an altitude where the police and prosecutors are not found) (sorry for the aviation reference)