MONEY MATTERS
MONEY MATTERS
It ’ s Your Money
BY JOSEPH BATTY , CA
My article “ It ’ s your Money ” that was published in the last edition of news & views spurred some interesting reactions from the readers . All comments received were positive , but several people had follow-up questions that I answered personally . After reviewing the follow-up again , I decided to continue writing on the ‘ money ’ topic .
Several weeks ago , Alberta premier Jim Prentice travelled to Toronto and New York to garner interest in the Keystone XL pipeline and in investment in Alberta . This kind of rhetoric usually gets a bit of press , but little is retained by the general public for more than a few days . These topics seem so far away from everyday peoples ’ lives that they simply become background noise .
Should everyday people be interested ? Of course that depends . It is everyone ’ s choice about what they spend their time reading , reviewing or studying . Considering we do live in an open society , there are some responsibilities each citizen is expected to assume in order for our society to operate effectively . So perhaps from that point of view , everyday people should show some interest in this kind of initiative .
I hope that after you read this article you will become interested in this subject . If I were in the audience of one of the appeals for investment , here is how I would see the exchange :
The Alberta Premier stands ‘ hat in hand ’ in front of the Toronto Board of Trade or a group of Wall Street investment bankers and sings the songs of praise for Alberta ’ s frontier investment opportunities . He points out some facts that purport to show that any money invested in Alberta is relatively safe and will provide the investors with substantial returns or profits .
A question comes from the floor : Why should someone from Toronto or New York invest in Alberta if Alberta and Albertans will not invest in Alberta ?
Obviously , the Premier will not have an answer to this question . All of his briefings have suggested that if you want money to flow into the Alberta economy , you must go east to where the centres of capital are . Supposedly , these are the people who control the money supply ; so you must go there and beg for their help and cooperation .
I doubt if this actually happened ; probably most of the people in the audience would have politely applauded , gone back to their offices and quickly forgotten the plea . So what is this all about ?
What we have here is a great dichotomy :
• The Premier is asking non-Albertans to spend some of their investment money in Alberta .
• Alberta ’ s public sector institutions and Albertans ’ savings accounts , RRSPs and TFSAs have massive amounts of money invested around the world , yet virtually none of this money is invested in or directed to the Alberta economy . Here are five examples ( and there are many more ) of the entities that hold or manage these massive amounts of money :
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