Category Archives: Finance

Don't Trust the Energy Retailers!

I found this amusing.

The CEO of one of North America's largest energy retailers has this to say about the price of electricity.

Taken from here: http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/191105

King has long argued that Ontario electricity prices are too artificially low and that conservation campaigns will have limited success unless users of electricity start to pay its true market value. It also constrains the growth of distributed generation, including renewables such as solar and geothermal. "If centralized generation (such as coal, nuclear and natural gas) continues to be subsidized, it's very difficult to make those distributed generation products competitive and compelling for households."

Now consider what his company does. His company charges users a fixed rate that is higher than the going market rate for power. They lock their customers into this higher rate for terms of several years based on powerful threats that the price of power is going to go through the roof and they will not be able to afford it.

Until now, it's my understanding that this has always been a losing proposition and that the market rate for power has always been lower than what people pay with these retailer contracts. If that is incorrect, some please cite a contradicting source.

Now consider what would happen if this guy were to be taken seriously on this.

If the price of power were to rise, like he wants it to, he would finally after all these years be able to claim that clients of the energy retailers had actually saved some money. Then they'd be able to sign up countless more suckers for these plans, showing that someone had actually benefitted in some way.

For him to position himself as an environmentalist is laughable. What he is, is a scam artist and this is just another ploy in his scheme to cheat people out of their money.

Allegedly.

Ontario Energy Scams

I just had one of those energy salesman scammers show up at my door. Universal Energy or Energy Savings or whatever.

Not only is he trying to get me to switch to an overpriced energy reseller and lock in to some inflated prices for a few years, but he flat-out lied to me and told me he's affiliated with Toronto Hydro.

I asked if he worked for Toronto Hydro. He told me they're affiliated with them because they show up on the hydro bill.

That's like a phone sex operator telling me they're affiliated with Bell because the charge comes on your phone bill.

He also told me 90% of my neighbours were already signed up. I hope to God that isn't true. I don't want to live in a neighbourhood full of idiots!

I hate these stupid energy scams.

If you've signed up with one, you've been had. If you want more information on that, drop a note and I'll explain further.

Crafty!

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1164667810101&call_pageid=968350072197&col=969048863851

If I understand this correctly…

The guy starts a business selling vitamins and nutrition bars.

Then he starts a charity to collect donations. He uses those donations to buy products from his business and distribute them. So basically, he doesn't actually need customers. He's using a charity to fund his business.

Then, to get more money into the charity, he sets up a tax scheme to bring in investors. He collects money from people to "secure loans" of much higher amounts, and gives them tax receipts for the higher amounts. So they claim the higher amount, and get back more in a tax refund than they actually donated in the first place. He tells them this is all legal so of course they line up in droves to give him money. I would too if I thought I could legally donate $2500 and then get $4000 back in taxes.

The "loans" come from a non-existant company that will obviously never ask for them to be repaid. Instead, he simply uses the donations to fund his original company, putting the money ultimately back into his own pocket.

Of course, he also has the option of demanding that the investors pay off these loans once he squanders away the money.

That would imply, however, that the loans actually existed and someone wanted to be repaid. I rather doubt that's the case and demanding more money from the investors would be a sure way of imploding his scheme.

He's doing this so openly that the Star has detailed it in an article and yet he's still getting away with it.

How is this allowed to happen???

I Know Where the Money Is

Read the whole article here.

More than $380bn has either been stolen or wasted by Nigerian governments since independence in 1960, the chief corruption fighter has said.

It's a shame nobody has asked me. I got an email just the other day from some guy with billions in the bank in Nigeria who wanted my help to retrieve it. He offered a nice sum for my services, too!

It's a shame I'm too lazy to help foreign embezzlers launder their windfalls.

On an unrelated note… I guess my prediction that the Mets would go to the World Series and get beat by the Tigers is moot. Now it'll be the Cardinals getting chewed up by the Tigers. Makes for better editorial cartoons I suppose.

What I'm worth.

Apparently in the overall scheme of things, every Canadian is worth $141,000.

So where's mine? Hell if I know!! Seems to me a bunch of rich people and corporations have hoarded up all my assets and are bathing in my money.

Stupid rich folk.

To add insult to injury, I'm supposed to be $1.08 in debt for every dollar of disposable income. Well I've got damn near nil in disposable income after paying all my bloody living expenses and my mortgage is a hell of a lot more than $1.08 so it would appear I'm getting screwed there too.

So then… who's the rich bastard I have to beat down to get my share???

I'll bet it's Chuck Guite, that rat bastard!!!