I am not Happy

Thanks to my cousin  Lorraine for this tale of what happened to her a while back. In her own words:

I rear-ended a  car this morning. So, there we were alongside the road and slowly the other driver got out of his car. 

You know how sometimes you just get soooo stressed and little things just seem funny? Yeah, well I couldn't believe it.... He was a DWARF!!!

 He stormed over to my car, looked up at me, and shouted, "I AM NOT HAPPY!!!" 

So, I looked down at him and said, "So which one are you then?"

A Cyprus-style financial meltdown in Canada is in the works

The following was written by: Thomas Walkom of the Toronto Star  and , Published on Thu Apr 04 2013 and I thought it showed be shared around the world.

If you are a foreign investor in Canada, you need to take note that you could lose your money. If you are a Canadian who is invested in Mutual Funds controlled by your bank you could lose your money. Harper is not a good  fiscal manager and is taking Canada down the wrong path. If you want to keep your money consider this story very seriously.

Be prepared. If you hold the wrong kind of bank accounts, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty may have your savings in his cross-hairs.

That’s the message from the finance department, which has been set the unwelcome task of having to explain the government’s latest attempt to prevent a Cyprus-style financial meltdown in Canada.

Two weeks ago, Flaherty quietly served notice in his budget that Ottawa is preparing a new set of what it called bail-in rules that it could impose should one of the country’s big banks face collapse.

The new rules would allow federal regulators to seize unspecified bank liabilities — including, perhaps, the savings of uninsured depositors — and use them to prop up a faltering institution.

Which, as it turns out, is exactly what Cyprus’ government did to deal with its banking crisis.

In the Cypriot case, the liabilities the government seized were the uninsured bank accounts of those with more than 100,000 euros on deposit.

So is Flaherty taking aim at Canadian savings in the event of a crisis hitting one of this country’s big banks?

That question has been swirling around the edge of financial circles since the budget. And it hasn’t yet been answered.

On Tuesday, Flaherty’s spokesperson told one newspaper that insured deposits — eligible savings up to $100,000 — would be safe from any crisis-induced confiscation scheme.

On Wednesday, I asked another spokesperson if uninsured deposits — including savings over $100,000 and ineligible savings such as mutual funds — would be equally safe.

The answer eventually came back that it would be “premature” to respond to that question until Ottawa has a chance to consult with the banks and others.

That is, there was no answer.

The budget says only that its proposed bail-in regime would allow the “rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital” in the event of a crisis.

In bank-speak, a liability is money the bank owes to bondholders, creditors, other banks and depositors. A bank’s “regulatory capital” is composed mainly of common stock held by owners.

So a bail-in would, at the stroke of a pen, transform some creditors into owners of a bank, which at that point no one might want to own.

Which creditors? The budget says Flaherty will follow the recommendations set out in a 2011 report by the Financial Stability Board, a new international body headed by Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney.

And those recommendations are blunt. Insured deposits would be protected. But uninsured deposits, including savings over the $100,000 limit and mutual funds, would be fair game.

At issue is the question of who pays to bail out a bank so big that its failure would trigger panic. In the 2008 meltdown, governments — particularly in Europe and the U.S. — ponied up the cash.

The new rules are designed to put the burden of any bank bailout on not just its stockholders but on those who choose to lend money to that institution without demanding security in return, including uninsured depositors.

Toronto-Dominion Bank chief economist Craig Alexander says that some of the problems can be solved by letting banks issue so-called contingent capital bonds — bonds that, at the point of crisis, would be automatically transformed into riskier share equity.

But as the International Monetary Fund has noted, contingent capital and bail-in capital are difference beasts. Those who buy contingent capital bonds know the risks up front.

A bail-in, however, catches the unwary. Here government uses its legal hammer to make those unwise enough to think their money was safe with a dodgy bank pay handsomely for their foolishness.

The good news is that the Canadian banking system is nowhere near as shaky as that of Cyprus. At their height, Cypriot banks held liabilities worth eight times the island nation’s entire economy.

The bad news is that the Cypriots thought their banks were safe, too.

Beliefs about Retirement

I thought this article found at SeniorsZenblog was an interesting perspective on what we Canadians believe will happen when we retire and what we actually do when we retire.

Canadians' Beliefs About Retirement written by Alice Lucette, on Tue, 12/27/2011 

What Canadians believe vs. what they are actually doing in their retirement years.
Canadians expectations of how they’ll be spending their retirement years and what they’re actually doing are not exactly lining up to be the same scenarios. According to a poll taken in the first quarter of 2011 of 2,245 Canadians age fifty and up, with assets of at least $100 thousand, three quarters of Canadians over age 50 believe they will be spending their retirement years traveling but in truth only 58 percent of retired Canadians spend time away from home. (Poll by Ipsos Reid for RBC)

Fourteen percent of Canadians are living the “snowbird” lifestyle of escaping to warmer climates during the winter months in contrast to the thirty percent of Canadians nearing retirement age that believe they will be spending chilly Canadians winters down south and staying home during the summer months.

Volunteering

Another popular belief that pre retirement Canadians have about their retirement years is that volunteering will occupy much of their time; according to the poll, sixty percent of women and fifty three percent of men expect that they will be doing volunteer work once retired. In actuality, among retired Canadians, forty one percent of women and thirty five percent of men are actively involved in volunteer work.

Why the discrepancy?
Senior Manager of Financial Planning Support with RBC Jason Round speculates that uncertainty and lack of financial planning account for the discrepancy in what Canadians visualize they’ll be doing compared with how they’re actually spending their retirement years.

The road to achieving ones financial goals and dreams for retirement depend upon having a financial plan, reviewing that plan regularly and updating it to accommodate the changing economic times. (From Vancouver Sun article by Tracy Sherlock December 13, 2011)

Thirty five percent of Canadians nearing retirement age see themselves as striving toward healthy lives and living an overall healthy lifestyle but in actuality forty six percent of retired Canadians are actively working toward improving their own personal health. In addition to this, starting new careers, taking more personal time and spending quality time with family and friends are higher priorities to retired Canadians than expected.

What are retired Canadians focusing on?

Canadians are spending lots of time educating themselves about finances. Among individuals polled, twelve percent of pre-retirement folks expect to spend time learning about retirement finances where twenty three percent of retired persons are focused on it. RBC’s Jason Round speculates that a belated start regarding retirement planning can still reduce uncertainty about what retirement will be like and enable seniors to be more able to realize their goals.

There are many financial institutions that offer help with retirement planning and a financial strategy is a benefit to all individuals no matter how near or how distant retirement may seem. 

Walking: Not such a pedestrian activity

An interesting view on Walking, (which I love to do) written by  John Chiramal

One thing you may have noted about our iconic religious figures of the past, like Mahavir, the Buddha, John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, Bodhidharma, Mohammed, Guru Nanak, Drukpa Kuenley, et al: you name them, they all did their fair share (and some) of walking.

So, the next time you trudge your way to school, work or shop, keep that in mind.  When you walk, one thing’s for sure, even with no one beside you, you’re still in the best company.

There were no cars in their days, of course; still, one gets the sense those luminaries would have sniffed at a lift, and plumped for good old shank’s pony as ever.  The fact is, save for a now and then mule or camel ride (and tiger’s back, in Guru Rinpoche’s case), they went about their (and/or God’s) biz on their own two feet.

For there is no better way to get your message across to the masses – ask any politico – than to rub shoulders with those you wish to reach.  At present, the politician may be the sole (and last) public figure to appreciate the value of pressing the flesh.

Something, in the spiritual context, some say, is not practical today.  Mores the pity, say I.  Though televangelists and globetrottereincarnates may beg to differ.

Still, in my mind, there is no doubt that, with the ascendancy of technology, religion has been made to play second fiddle in the ensemble of modern life.  It almost looks like most of the great souls, who walked this earth, showed a clean pair of heels, either by chance or choice, before the wheels rolled in.

Hikes that changed the course of history 

Two epochal tramps that spring to mind, I’m sure you’ll agree, are Mahatma Gandhi’s Dandi March and Chairman Mao Zedong’s Long March.

To recap, at the risk of boring you, let me share a brief history lesson.

On March 12, 1930, Gandhi and 78 satyagrahis (exponents of non-violent resistance) set out on foot for the coastal village of Dandi, Gujarat, over 390km from Sabarmati ashram, their starting point.

He arrived at the seashore on April 5.  The next morning, after a prayer, Gandhi raised a lump of salty mud and declared, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.”

He then went on to boil it in seawater, to produce, what was then, illegal salt.

Mao’s Long March, on the other hand, was a military retreat by the Red Army of the Communist Party of China, to shake off the pursuit of the Kuomintang (KMT or Chinese Nationalist Party) army.

There was not one long march, but a series of them, as several red armies in the south escaped to the north and west.  The march from Jiangxi province, which began in October 1934 and covered some 12,500km over 370 days, was the most well known one.

The Long March sparked the rise to power of Mao Zedong.

 A well-known walker and not so renowned one

John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, is closely linked with the domestication of America.  In the early 1800s, he roamed the frontier, planting apple seeds and helping to make the wilderness a home for the spreading pioneers.  He planted over a hundred thousand square miles of apple orchards in western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.

Johnny Appleseed was, to draw it mild, an eccentric.  A vegetarian, who walked barefoot, also out of character with his times, he was kind to animals and made friends with the Indians.

He preached a Christianity that had a healthy dose of nature-worship, and embodied two extremes: the rough-and-ready free spirit and the gentle altruist.

This second walker of my choice is Nain Singh Rawat, one of the first pundits to explore the Himalayas for the British.  Hailing from the Johaar Valley of Kumaon, he mapped the trade route through Nepal to Tibet, found out for the first time the site and height of Lhasa, and mapped a large section of the Tsangpo, a major Tibetan river.

Of his prodigious feats of survey, it was remarked “his explorations have added a larger amount of important knowledge to the map of Asia than any other living man”.

He was trained by endless practice to take a pace (in the footsteps of the Buddha, as if it were), which, be it uphill, downhill or on a plain, stayed the same – thirty-three inches.

Next, he learned how to keep an exact count of steps taken in a day, or between any two landmarks.  This was done with the aid of a Buddhist rosary, which had one hundred (as opposed to the 108 that is the norm) beads.  Each complete round of his ‘secular’ rosary, thus, tallied ten thousand paces or five miles.

The intrinsic value of a walk

Not to belabour the obvious, let me mention in passing how walking can act like a tonic to the system.

Walking is a gentle, low-impact workout that can ease you into a higher state of fitness and health.  It’s a form of exercise almost anyone can do.  Safe and simple, it needs no practice.  And the health benefits are many.

To list some, walking can help you:

• Lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (the “bad” cholesterol)

• Raise high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (the “good” cholesterol)

• Bring down your blood pressure

• Reduce your risk of or manage type-2 diabetes

• Raise your spirits

• Stay strong and fit

All it takes to reap these fruits is a routine of brisk walking.  It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

As for the “no pain, no gain” brigade, it’s just talk, a mask for the masochistic bent.  Research shows that regular, quick walks can reduce the risk of heart attack by the same amount as more robust exercise, such as jogging.