Ambler, Kronick – Lessons for Canada in the US Repo Rate Spike
To: Canadians Concerned about Monetary Policy From: Jeremy Kronick and Steve Ambler Date: October 11, 2019 Re: Lessons for Canada in the US Repo Rate Spike Last month, overnight borrowing rates in the US skyrocketed as high as 9 percent as the overnight lending market froze and financial institutions with excess cash on deposit at […] Denis Meunier – Canada Business Corporation Act Changes To Beneficial Ownership: Half-measures To Combat Money Laundering And Terrorist Financing
From: Denis Meunier To: Financial Entities, Securities Dealers, Life Insurance Sector and Money Services Businesses Date: October 9, 2019 Re: Canada Business Corporation Act changes to beneficial ownership: half-measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing Ottawa moved too cautiously on ownership declarations from business entities in its recent changes to the act that governs […] A Tale of Two Pension Plans: My Experience with a Contingent Pension Plan and the Lessons Learned
October 3, 2019 – By sharing the experience of a pension plan operating in two very different regulatory environments, pension expert Randy Bauslaugh shows how contingent pension plans, with benefits conditional on financial performance, are more reliable in times of stress and more cost-efficient than other alternatives. But they require accommodative legislation to survive economic […] Thorsten Koeppl – Libra Could Kickstart Digital Currencies
From: Thorsten Koeppl To: Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz Date: July 17, 2019 Re: Libra Could Kickstart Digital Currencies Facebook has teamed up with some heavyweights in the payments industry such as Visa and Mastercard and other online platforms to usher in a new era for payments services: an international, widely accepted digital currency called Libra. This should […] Facebook’s Libra Shows It’s Time For Central Banks To Step Up – Globe And Mail Op-ed
Facebook has teamed up with some heavyweights in the payments industry such as Visa and Mastercard and other online platforms to usher in a new era for payments services: an international, widely accepted digital currency called Libra.
This should not come as a surprise. Online trading – often cross-border – cries out for such a payment instrument. And online networks reach full functionality only if they provide a medium of exchange that can be used to trade or transfer value seamlessly on the network.
Privacy and regulatory concerns aside, Libra thus makes a lot of sense as a business model.
But its true value may arise from somewhere else: being a credible threat to the international monetary order. Central banks…
Glen Hodgson – Sustainable Finance: What Role for Crown Financial Institutions?
From: Glen Hodgson To: Canada’s finance ministers and financial industry Date: July 10, 2019 Re: Sustainable Finance: What Role for Crown Financial Institutions? An earlier Intelligence Memo outlined the final report from the federal government’s expert panel on sustainable finance. Sustainable finance is about enhanced business opportunities as well as being green – positioning Canada and its investment institutions […] Glen Hodgson – Sustainable Finance: From the Margins to the Mainstream
From: Glen Hodgson To: Canada’s finance ministers and financial industry Date: June 28, 2019 Re: Sustainable Finance: From the Margins to the Mainstream Canada has been lagging international developments in sustainable finance – still regarding green finance as a marginal activity as other nations pile in. To address the issue, the federal government last year set up an expert […] Jeremy Kronick on BNN – Getting private equity involved to scale up Canadian companies
A new report from C.D. Howe says private equity is part of the solution for corporate Canada’s scaling problem. For more on this, BNN Bloomberg spoke with Jeremy Kronick, associate director of research at C.D. Howe Institute.
Schwanen, Kronick, Omran – Leveraging Private Equity Energy to Fuel Small Business Development
From: Daniel Schwanen, Jeremy Kronick and Farah Omran To: Canadian tax authorities Date: May 31, 2019 Re: Leveraging Private Equity Energy to Fuel Small Business Development Canadian firms generate just 73 percent as much gross domestic product per hours worked as their US peers, down from more than 90 percent in the 1980s. At the same time, fewer small […] Growth Surge: How Private Equity Can Scale Up Firms and the Economy
May 30, 2019 – Private equity deals are key to fueling the growth of small firms, as well as the Canadian economy, according to a report from the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Growth Surge: How Private Equity Can Scale Up Firms and the Economy,” Daniel Schwanen, Jeremy Kronick and Farah Omran examine the role of […] Why Canada’s money-laundering problem is far bigger than we think – Financial Post Op-Ed
On May 9, an expert panel on money laundering issued its report, Combatting Money Laundering in BC Real Estate, in which it estimated 2018 money laundering in Canada at $46.7 billion. In a recent C.D. Howe Institute report, titled Why We Fail to Catch Money Launderers 99.9% of the Time, I estimate money laundering in Canada at $100 billion to $130 billion. Who’s right?
Actually, it doesn’t matter. Both estimates are massive. They sound an alarm for action, and we now turn to our federal and provincial leaders to implement a public registry of beneficial ownership, as recommended by both reports.
Unfortunately, instead of action, some officials have attacked the panel report for its surprising allocation of money laundering…
Paul M. Jacobson – Is There a Big Mortgage Debt Problem?
From: Paul M. Jacobson To: Canadians concerned about debt levels Date: May 21, 2019 Re: Is There a Big Mortgage Debt Problem? In our 2015 C.D. Howe Institute study, Craig Alexander and I looked at some aspects of household mortgages in Canada. The main research dataset was the 2012 cycle of the Survey of Financial […]