{"id":24365,"date":"2017-07-04T07:44:52","date_gmt":"2017-07-04T12:44:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=24365"},"modified":"2017-07-04T07:44:52","modified_gmt":"2017-07-04T12:44:52","slug":"rosen-slams-canadian-accountants-investors-are-being-swindled-peter-diekmeyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=24365","title":{"rendered":"Rosen Slams Canadian Accountants: \u201cInvestors Are Being Swindled” – Peter Diekmeyer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rosen Slams Canadian Accountants: \u201cInvestors Are Being Swindled” – Peter Diekmeyer<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
\"Rosen<\/div>\n
Bill Morneau was one of the country\u2019s top pension fund management professionals before he went into government. But when Canada\u2019s Minister of Finance recently addressed Concordia University business students, not one asked about the country\u2019s $4 trillion national debt, much of which is pension-related.<\/div>\n
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That\u2019s not surprising \u2013 because, <\/span>as the Fraser Institute notes<\/a><\/span>, nearly three quarters of those debts are not included in the federal and provincial governments\u2019 financial statements. So, Canadians have no clue how bad the country\u2019s true financial situation is. <\/span><\/p>\n

This lax reporting is spread throughout the system, including public companies, says one expert. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cInvestors are being systematically swindled out of large amounts of retirement savings,\u201d says Al Rosen, a forensic accountant and co-author of <\/span>Easy Prey Investors<\/a><\/span>, a recently-released book that details shortfalls of Canada\u2019s lax reporting standards.<\/span><\/p>\n

Accounting scandals abound<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cInvestors mistakenly believe that their pension plans, mutual funds and other investments are safeguarded,\u201d says Rosen. \u201cIn fact, they are suffering losses that are monumental, compared to individual publicized scams.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

A key challenge, says Rosen, relates to Canada\u2019s use of International Financial Reporting Standards, which \u201cassign excessive power and choice to corporate management, providing them the ability to inflate corporate profits.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Rosen cites a range of accounting scandals including Valeant, Nortel and Sino-Forest as examples of Canadian laxness. <\/span><\/p>\n

(In one famous fraud case, Bre-X, auditors couldn\u2019t be bothered to check if the company\u2019s gold mine, its only major asset, actually existed. External accountants instead essentially relied on a manager\u2019s claim that he had \u201cfound gold\u201d in the core samples he presented to a valuation firm, when they signed off on the statements).<\/span><\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rosen Slams Canadian Accountants: \u201cInvestors Are Being Swindled” – Peter Diekmeyer Bill Morneau was one of the country\u2019s top pension fund management professionals before he went into government. But when Canada\u2019s Minister of Finance recently addressed Concordia University business students, not one asked about the country\u2019s $4 trillion national debt, much of which is pension-related. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15476,103,13228,6355],"class_list":["post-24365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-al-rosen","tag-canada","tag-peter-diekmeyer","tag-sprott-money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24366,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24365\/revisions\/24366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}