What-Debt? does not support a tax on financial institutions – taxes can be discussed, quantified and challenged in court: true to his authoritarian instincts, he seeks instead a transfer of power to regulators:
Canada opposes efforts to impose a new global tax on financial services in the world’s major economies, according to a government document obtained by Bloomberg News.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, which will host a summit of Group of 20 leaders in June, instead is urging countries to adopt sound regulatory practices such as Canada’s, according to an internal document distributed today to lawmakers from the governing Conservative Party.
Meanwhile, Spend Every Penny is proud of his total inability to think ahead:
“We know that other countries do this type of analysis [of the effects of demographics on government finances]. The U.S. does it annually. The U.K. does it annually. Scandinavians do it annually. Other countries do it every three years. This … needs to become a regular pattern in Canada.”
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s office suggested Mr. Page’s report is speculative. Spokesman Chisholm Pothier said the government is concerned with immediate challenges.
“Making assumptions and calculations 75 years into the future may be an important academic exercise for some, but Canadians expect their government to focus on today’s economy and securing the fragile economic recovery,” Mr. Pothier said.
I guess they’re too busy bragging to the G-20 about how often they lecture the banks about forward planning!
The Philadelphia SEC is incorporating social networks into market surveillance, which makes all kinds of sense:
“Our focus is on conducting trader-based investigations, rather than going security by security,” said [Philadelphia SEC Director Daniel] Hawke, who has run the Philadelphia office since 2006 and will now also serve as director of the new market abuse unit.
The goal, he said was to discover “hard-to-detect frauds.”
Much of the initial detective work that Hawke’s group is doing relies heavily on computers. The team cross-checks trading data on dozens of stocks with personal information about individual traders, such as where they went to business school or where they used to work.
Hawke said his investigators are looking for patterns of “behavior by traders across multiple securities” and seeing if there are any common relationships or associations between those traders.
The Boston Fed has released a Public Policy Brief by Katharine Bradbury titled State Government Budgets and the Recovery Act:
State and local governments, with revenues reduced sharply by the recession, are responding by cutting services, increasing tax rates, and drawing down reserves; they are also receiving some relief in the form of stimulus funds provided by the federal government. The stimulus funds legislated in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act only partly offset the recession‐induced shortfalls and are scheduled to phase out before most analysts believe state and local governments will see fiscal recovery well underway. Thus, observers are concerned that the state‐local sector will create a substantial drag on the overall economy during fiscal year 2011 and into 2012. This brief compiles data on state gaps, responses, and stimulus funding nationwide and discusses potential implications for the national economy.
Volume remained at good levels to close the week, but prices were mixed; PerpetualDiscounts lost 16bp while FixedResets gained 8bp.
| HIMIPref™ Preferred Indices These values reflect the December 2008 revision of the HIMIPref™ Indices Values are provisional and are finalized monthly |
|||||||
| Index | Mean Current Yield (at bid) |
Median YTW |
Median Average Trading Value |
Median Mod Dur (YTW) |
Issues | Day’s Perf. | Index Value |
| Ratchet | 2.86 % | 3.40 % | 31,436 | 20.51 | 1 | 1.4902 % | 1,927.9 |
| FixedFloater | 5.43 % | 3.53 % | 42,177 | 19.55 | 1 | 5.0394 % | 2,909.1 |
| Floater | 1.99 % | 1.71 % | 43,612 | 23.28 | 4 | -0.1640 % | 2,310.3 |
| OpRet | 4.86 % | -0.26 % | 104,745 | 0.19 | 13 | -0.2362 % | 2,315.6 |
| SplitShare | 6.34 % | -4.63 % | 130,368 | 0.08 | 2 | 0.0657 % | 2,151.7 |
| Interest-Bearing | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | -0.2362 % | 2,117.4 |
| Perpetual-Premium | 5.76 % | 5.43 % | 83,580 | 5.91 | 7 | -0.0621 % | 1,900.1 |
| Perpetual-Discount | 5.84 % | 5.88 % | 175,467 | 14.04 | 69 | -0.1641 % | 1,806.9 |
| FixedReset | 5.40 % | 3.57 % | 313,059 | 3.76 | 42 | 0.0811 % | 2,188.0 |
| Performance Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Change | Notes |
| MFC.PR.B | Perpetual-Discount | -1.13 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2040-02-19 Maturity Price : 20.13 Evaluated at bid price : 20.13 Bid-YTW : 5.89 % |
| POW.PR.D | Perpetual-Discount | -1.10 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2040-02-19 Maturity Price : 20.77 Evaluated at bid price : 20.77 Bid-YTW : 6.11 % |
| MFC.PR.A | OpRet | -1.09 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Soft Maturity Maturity Date : 2015-12-18 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 26.34 Bid-YTW : 3.23 % |
| BAM.PR.O | OpRet | -1.06 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Option Certainty Maturity Date : 2013-06-30 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 26.02 Bid-YTW : 3.94 % |
| BAM.PR.E | Ratchet | 1.49 % | This issue forms a Strong Pair with BAM.PR.G; an analytical framework for Strong Pairs was discussed in the February PrefLetter. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2040-02-19 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 19.75 Bid-YTW : 3.40 % |
| BAM.PR.G | FixedFloater | 5.04 % | This issue forms a Strong Pair with BAM.PR.G; an analytical framework for Strong Pairs was discussed in the February PrefLetter. Today’s gain was entirely legitimate, as the issue traded 7,460 shares in a range of 19.30-00 before closing at 20.01-20, 1×9. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2040-02-19 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 20.01 Bid-YTW : 3.53 % |
| Volume Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Shares Traded |
Notes |
| CM.PR.K | FixedReset | 74,350 | RBC crossed two blocks of 10,000 each, both at 26.83. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2014-08-30 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 26.77 Bid-YTW : 3.69 % |
| TRP.PR.A | FixedReset | 67,564 | Nesbitt crossed 50,000 at 26.10. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2015-01-30 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 26.08 Bid-YTW : 3.78 % |
| TD.PR.P | Perpetual-Discount | 64,909 | Nesbitt crossed 50,000 at 23.60. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2040-02-19 Maturity Price : 23.37 Evaluated at bid price : 23.56 Bid-YTW : 5.62 % |
| ACO.PR.A | OpRet | 63,517 | Called for redemption. National bought 10,000 from Laurentian at 25.65; RBC crossed 50,000 at 25.64. Both these prices are in excess of the call price (including final dividend) and we are past the last full-dividend ex-Date … so either there is some kind of dividend-capture game going on or the buyers are stupid; one or the other, maybe both. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2010-03-21 Maturity Price : 25.50 Evaluated at bid price : 25.62 Bid-YTW : -1.96 % |
| RY.PR.H | Perpetual-Premium | 44,110 | National crossed 17,500 at 25.02. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2040-02-19 Maturity Price : 24.67 Evaluated at bid price : 24.90 Bid-YTW : 5.70 % |
| BNS.PR.R | FixedReset | 37,516 | RBC crossed 30,000 at 26.33. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2014-02-25 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 26.31 Bid-YTW : 3.65 % |
| There were 35 other index-included issues trading in excess of 10,000 shares. | |||