Illegal immigrants are not responsible for the global financial crisis.

“Our civilization in Europe took a thousand years to develop what we have today, the third world players have been around just as long and have chosen violence, mayhem and filth as they chosen medium, ”

This level of ignorance and hatred is disgusting, and does not belong here. Change the subject back to finance now please.

Current score: 0 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

Was anything I said untrue?

Current score: -6 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

I could not agree more emphatically. Holy sh*t! I, too, have travelled extensively to 3rd world countries. I saw nothing but people struggling to do their best. How you come to your conclusions conclusions, realpaul, is beyond me, beyond my comprension. It seems some history reading would be helpful here to help gain understanding and context. I’m not kidding. Wow. I have no time to get into it all – and this is not the place. Let’s just talk about RE, I suppose. Having said that, may all those of us who witness (or read) intolerence remember to speak out. It’s totally unacceptable – as is remaining silent in the face of it.

Current score: 6 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

this thread has taken a really ugly turn.

Current score: 5 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

Unknown it is what life threatening “danger” they face returning to Mexico, but whatever, there are THOUSANDS here thanking you for your generous support.

Current score: -1 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

I have traveled extensively and have come to the conclusion that peoples in the third world are thier own worst enemies. They support absolute corruption as normal, make no attempt to improve thier own societies. Exercise extreme tribal, religious, language , geographic, economic and racist wars and systemic violence upon each other and have generally been the master authors of thier own destruction to the point where they have turned thier own countries, homelands and economies into unlivable toilets which now they are trying to escape.

IMHO western countries should be putting more pressure on these people to clean up thier own act before springing into political correctness action and allowing the overflow of these malcontents into our country to drain our already scarce resources. Imagine a world where tribes weren’t murdering each other, where Islam could decide not to raid thier neighbours steal the women and rape the goats over a disagreement over who should have succeeded Mohammed ( peace be to him) 1500 years ago exploding the ritual battles of blood and constant mayhem in the name of tribal devisions be they Sunni or Shiite.

Mexicans need to stay in Mexico and work for a better Mexican economy and corruption, why aren’t they marching in the street? Ethiopians and Somali’s need to stop killing each other over blood feuds and tribal disputes etc etc. Canada is not a fund raising time out spot for terrorists from India , Sri Lanka or anywhere else for that matter. Canadian church groups should not be allowed to disrespect the CDN immigration system and rename Chinese catholics and Evangelist as religious refugees, the Chinese should be working in China to improve China.

Now the the religious and ethnic wars are over in the Balkans and it’s safe to go back, why are all these war displaced refugees still in Canada? We hepled them out, do we have to support them forever, isn’t it better to build a better Bosnia, wouldn’t that be better for the planet at large?

Political correctness is the problem not the solution. These people need to concentrate on using the aid money they recieve to build schools, flush toilets, roads, hospitals etc etc, instead of cheap russian guns. The bulk of the aid money is stolen and ends up in Swiss banks and French Chateaus, this has been voiced by the British Government.

Our civilization in Europe took a thousand years to develop what we have today, the third world players have been around just as long and have chosen violence, mayhem and filth as they chosen medium, why should we be rescuing these people who have no intrest in helping themselves?

Current score: -3 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

Current score: 1 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

What is the obligation of any given country to accept these parties , do we have the resources to accept them and what is the impact on the current citizen base(which itself is made up of both immigrant (including past refugees)and native born citizens.

We can never accept every legitimate refugee or any other immigrant. There is a limit to that.

So, where do we draw the line?

IMHO, when times get more diffiult, we have to tighten up and allow less.
If not, then we drag this country down to thel owest common denominator and enter into frontier territory and a race to the bottom.. This conflicts with the very reason why these parties want to come here in the first place. There has to be a happy medium, but regardless can we even afford in these uncertain times the historical levels we have allowed to date?

Current score: -1 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

Current score: 1 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

“41,900 refugee claims are now pending in Canada. They take at least a year to resolve and much longer if appealed. In 2005 12,000 people made the cut, implying 3 out of 4 refugee claims are bogus.”

Lets assume there are 4,200 “refugees” in the lower mainland. Lets further assume 3000 of them are bogus.

Welfare pays around $ 600 per month for a single male. Thats $ 1.8 million per month for the scammers. If the bogus “refugee” appeals their deportation they will be here at very least 2 years. The direct cost of these scammers is now $ 43 million.

All refugees are provided room and board immediately. Those beds are unavailable for Canadian homeless.

But that ain’t all. Lets assume 80% of the scammers are working “under the table”. Thats 2400 jobs in the lower mainland alone that ARE NOT available for Cannadians. No taxes, no CPP, no UIC, no contributions of any kind to our society. Further, most send the bulk of their earnings home, meaning virtualy nothing accrues to Canada.

Yes, it IS a major problem and one that MUST be addressed. Canadians are an open and giving people but we MUST NOT become a completely generous sucker for those seeking to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense.

Current score: 4 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

http://www.househunting.ca/sto.....17&p=2

Current score: 0 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com...../National/

QUOTE:
This piece of property … is the tenderloin of real estate left in the city,” Mr. Poole said yesterday, while stressing that he was speaking as a veteran real estate developer and not as a spokesman for the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC).

“It’s the last remaining piece of waterfront. It’s something we would all covet. This is it.”

===============================================
QUOTE:

Many believe that post-Olympic sales of the project’s luxury condominiums will not be enough to enable the city to recoup all the money shelled out to finish the village in time, given plummeting real estate prices.

Mr. Poole, however, said he thinks the city will do quite well. “As a taxpayer, I am not losing any sleep that the city is going to lose money on this. It’s a question of how much money they’re going to make.”

By the time units go on sale, there will be a shortage of high-level condominiums available because other projects are being mothballed in the face of shrinking sales, he said. “I don’t have a crystal ball to tell you what the market will be like in 12 or 24 months, but if anything is going to be marketable, it’s going to be those units on False Creek.”

————————————————-

On the question of financing, Mr. Poole said the city now has all the tools it needs, after obtaining unlimited borrowing powers at a special weekend sitting of the provincial legislature.

“In my view, there will be a lineup of investors to participate in the financing the city requires. … Financial institutions and pension plans will want to buy that paper [debentures] as soon as it’s offered,” the VANOC chairman predicted. “It will not be an issue.”

—————————————————

So:
Rose coloured glasses ?.

Poole may be right that in the relativity game, these may be prime choice, but what will the market price be?
Just because you put $”X” into each unit and ask “Y” does not mean they will even get “X” back..all indication is they will be sold for less than $”X” ie far below break even.

In another article…it is clear that they will be going in and doing renos on the condo units after the Olympics are over. It was noted carpets will be temporary and hardwood floors put in. Whers the environmental spin?Also, you don’t thik they may have to repaint each one.

Current score: 0 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

Same argument as tobacco companies used against those nutty health risk alarmists, as Exxon-sponsored “scientists” are using against global warming, as is commonly used by anyone making tons of money in a societally-harmful way.
Do you realize the process by which a new food additive is approved? As long as the mouse doesn’t die within days, all good to go!
Anyway, I agree with most of your posts, but you should really stick to business and economics. It’s pretty deep mud everywhere else! There are both real refugee claimants fleeing terrible threats, and bogus system-scammers. Also about 5-6 BILLION people who don’t have it as good we do here. Let’s take them all!!! At taxpayer expense!!! Yayyy!

OK, that won’t work. How many do we accept, and how do we choose them. The most pathetic? The pushiest? The least ethical? See where I’m going? I’m stopping now, the mud is getting too deep for my tastes.

Current score: 4 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

The unreality of the ‘real’ business cycle
Not to mention capitalism’s ‘gale of creative destruction’

http://www.theglobeandmail.com.....y/Comment/

QUOTE:

Testifying recently before a U.S. congressional committee, former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan said the financial meltdown had shattered his “intellectual structure.” I am keen to understand what he meant.

Since I have had no opportunity to ask him, I have to rely on his memoirs, The Age of Turbulence, for clues. But that book was published in 2007 – before, presumably, his intellectual structure fell apart.

In his memoirs, Mr. Greenspan revealed that his favourite economist was Joseph Schumpeter, inventor of the concept of “creative destruction.” In his summary of Mr. Schumpeter’s thinking, a “market economy will incessantly revitalize itself from within by scrapping old and failing businesses and then reallocating resources to newer, more productive ones.” Mr. Greenspan had seen “this pattern of progress and obsolescence repeat over and over again.”
————————————————-

QUOTE

In classic business-cycle theory, a boom is initiated by a clutch of inventions – power looms and spinning jennies in the 18th century, railways in the 19th century, automobiles in the 20th century. But competitive pressures and the long gestation period of fixed-capital outlays multiply optimism, leading to more investment being undertaken than is actually profitable. Such overinvestment produces an inevitable collapse.

Banks magnify the boom by making credit too easily available, and they exacerbate the bust by withdrawing it too abruptly. But the legacy is a more efficient stock of capital equipment.

Dennis Robertson, an early 20th-century “real” business-cycle theorist, wrote: “I do not feel confident that a policy which, in the pursuit of stability of prices, output, and employment, had nipped in the bud the English railway boom of the forties, or the American railway boom of 1869-71, or the German electrical boom of the nineties, would have been on balance beneficial to the populations concerned.” Like Mr. Schumpeter, Mr. Robertson regarded these boom-bust cycles, which involved both the creation of new capital and the destruction of old capital, as inseparable from progress.
—————————————————–

( More modern times):
QUOTE
Contemporary “real” business-cycle theory builds a mountain of mathematics on top of these early models, the main effect being to minimize the “destructiveness” of the “creation.” It manages to combine technology-driven cycles of booms and recessions with markets that always clear (that is, there’s no unemployment).

How is this trick accomplished? When a positive technological “shock” raises real wages, people will work more, causing output to surge. In the face of a negative “shock,” workers will increase their leisure, causing output to fall.

These are efficient responses to changes in real wages. No intervention by government is needed. Bailing out inefficient auto companies such as General Motors only slows down the rate of progress. In fact, whereas most schools of economic thought maintain that one of government’s key responsibilities is to smooth the cycle, “real” business-cycle theory argues that reducing volatility reduces welfare.

It is hard to see how this type of theory explains today’s economic turbulence or offers sound instruction about how to deal with it. First, in contrast to the dot-com boom, it is difficult to identify the technological “shock” that set off the boom. Of course, the upswing was marked by super-abundant credit. But this was not used to finance new inventions: It was the invention. It was called securitized mortgages. It left no monuments to human invention, only piles of financial ruin.
————————————————-

QUOTE:

Equivalent advice today would be that governments the world over are doing all the wrong things in bailing out top-heavy banks, subsidizing inefficient businesses, and putting obstacles in the way of rational workers spending more time with their families or taking lower-paid jobs.

It reminds me of the interviewer who went to see Robert Lucas, one of the high priests of the New Business Cycle school, at a time of high U.S. unemployment in the 1980s. “My driver is an unemployed PhD graduate,” the interviewer told Mr. Lucas. “Well,” replied the 1995 Nobel laureate, “I’d say that, if he’s driving a taxi, he’s a taxi driver.”

————————————————-

Good article.

Seems to indicate that Gov’ts, Banksters etc do a ” Plug and Play” to prime the pump.
Plug in some thing that will create or “Play” out a “boom” .
The latest one , the RE run up. makes one think that the powers that be have run out of ideas, the well is dry.

Current score: 1 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

This begs the question, where do these people come out with all that money to buy those condos?

———–

This type of buyer was somewhat predictable.
Not sure if they had the means to purchase, and the so called “discount” was their affordability benchmark.

OR …were they “bears” in their own mind….thinking they are great bargain hunters, and need to have bait thrown at them to pounce. This type sems to be the ones that if they hear the word “sale”, they react like Pavlov’s dog with open wallets, and feel its true, the facts and details be damned.

In a declining market, one can predict and define various buyer groups. The aforementioned types would tend to be naive and unsophisticated, with a clear lack of understanding of the normal real estate cycles, but even worse, not reading how this latest one will shape up.

A truly sophisticated “bear” buyer is still hibernating…hedging their own bets via all indications are that major haircuts are still to come.

Maybe its good the “the Flo” and other ONNI product came on market..it tested the waters and we can get a feel for the market learning from others self-inflicted mistakes as these fire sales start and thus let others get burned while the rest of us watch from a safe distance.

Current score: 4 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

Microsoft 5000
Unisys 1300
Hewlett – Packard 25000
Sun Micro systems 6000

Current score: 4 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

Well sure, I agree the refugee system needs improving. I have already said so.

But one of the biggest problems with the system is that there are too many spurious claimants. They take up too many resources and impair our ability to help genuine claimants. Because the system works so slowly the spurious claimants have an opportunity to marry or have children in Canada to make it more difficult to remove them. If we had a fair and expeditious system the incentive for spurious claimants would be much smaller. Also the fewer resources that are available to investigate claims, the more likely the board members are to give claimants the benefit of the doubt whether genuine or not.

It should also go without saying that the prevalence of spurious claimants who are obvious to anyone (as I have given examples of above), erodes public support for refugee protection.

You might like to know that one reason I hold these views is that I personally know someone who used to be on the refugee board, who is one of the strongest advocates for human rights that I know, and he told me that the great majority of claimants were not from countries that were major human rights abusers.

If the government allocated sufficient resources to the system, it would result both in better protection for genuine claimants and quicker removal of, and ultimately fewer claims from, the spurious ones.

Current score: 6 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

” it is also being rumored that Microsoft is planning to fire 15,000 employees this month; about 17 percent of its workforce. That’s a much bigger hit. Server maker and services provider Unisys just announced 1,300 layoffs, about 5 percent of its workforce. Hewlett-Packard announced last fall that as part of its acquisition of services giant Electronic Data Systems, the company would be cutting 25,000 jobs over two years, or about 7 percent of its global workforce; you can bet a lot of those job cuts have nothing to do with EDS, but this way HP only has to put out one press release. Sun Microsystems, which has been struggling in the server space, announced in November it would cut 5,000 to 6,000 employees, or between 15 and 18 percent of its workforce.”

Current score: 1 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

Current score: 0 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

Sale lasted 2 1/2 hours, sold 55 units:

Did anyone even kick the tires ?

PS Supraboy: do you think they got a bargain?”

As much of an a** that I am here, I think those people are idiots buying those junk units by Onni. The granite they used on the kitchen tops aren’t even half inch thick.

This begs the question, where do these people come out with all that money to buy those condos?

Current score: -4 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh011209-story02.html

Microsoft 15000
Unisys 1300
Hewlett – Packard 25000
Sun Micro systems 6000″

RealPaul, those are only rumors, don’t read too much into it till it happens.

Current score: -4 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

Current score: 0 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

http://www.cpj.ca/content/safe.....ees-canada

There is so much criticism of the immigration system it’s not even funny.

Current score: 0 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

You have to show us evidence of genuine claimants being refused. If you claim something is happening, the onus is on you to prove it. Not on the person who claims something isn’t happening.

Do you have any examples of rejected refugee claimants facing retribution after being returned to their country of origin?

Current score: 3 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

http://www.vancouversun.com/bu.....story.html

Current score: 0 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)