HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2001-01-17, Page 5Bonnie
Gropp
The short of it
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2001. PAGE 5.
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Big brother is downloading you .of to be paranoid or anything, but do
you ever get the feeling that
you're...being watched? You're not
paranolct ,-- just observant. Various - agencies,
goverotnevital. And -otherwise, are taking an _
increasing interest in peeping over our
shoulders to find out what we're up to.
We've grown accustomed to the idea of
cameras in banks watching for Stephen Reid
wannabes. We don't bat an eye at cameras
mounted over intersections to intercept
speeders. But by God, I draw the line at
omelette surveillance.
A recent report in The New York Times
reveals that several high-end Manhattan
restaurants have quietly installed digital
surveillance cameras.
The cameras have zoom lenses for close-ups
of what you're eating - or whispering to your
date. They also have 'remote access' so that
anybody from the maitre 'd to the coat check
clerk can zero in on you and find out if you're
enjoying the specialite de la maison.
Or, for that matter if you're picking your
nose.
Why would restaurateurs choose to spy on
their clientele?
They claim that the cameras allow the
kitchen staff to know when you're finishing
your appetizer so they can send out the entrée
on time. .
And since the whole system is computerized,
Dusing the first two months of each year
in Canada there is a frenzy • of
advertising by most of the financial
organizations as they try to persuade you to
invest some money in their many RSP
programs.
If you are rather confused by all these
blandishments, don't feel embarrassed. Most
people are and frequently when it comes to
looking at the foreign content of these
investments
Let me suggest a few rules to help you to
make a decision.
Most of the institutions such as the banks
that want to sell you RSPs, with either a
foreign or a domestic content, or both, are
prone to giving their sales staff rather fancy
titles, but their job is only to sell the products
of the company and not give you objective
evaluations of their stocks compared to all the
others available. About the only time you are
able to get such evaluations is when you talk to
an independent advisor or someone outside the
industry who is in the business of assessing
such investments.
However, if you do want to ask questions,
you might inquire, for openers, if a fund has a
back-end load. While this may avoid paying a
sales commission, it may have a nasty side
effect of forcing you to pay what is called a
redemption fee if you decide to cash in the
stock within the first few years. This fee may
be as much as six per cent which seems a high
price to pay for changing your mind.
The only way out, you might have guessed,
is if you switch to another fund offered by the
same company.
Try not to concentrate too heavily in one
sector and remember that, while there are
certainly profits to be made in foreign stocks,
they, like stocks in Canada, fluctuate in value
and not always in unison with Canadian stocks.
They may even fluctuate considerably more
than domestic investments so don't be
surprised if you see this happen after you have
bought, say, South-east Asia Hula Hoop Corp.
for $5 a share and it is now selling at 49 cents.
While the United States is probably the best
some restaurants are taking advantage of
vacant disc space to build up personal profiles
of their regular customers - what you like to
eat, how much you drink, your phone number,
your address, your MasterCard number...
Creepy as the idea of cameras in restaurants
is, it's small potatoes compared to the software
the Federal Bureau of Investigation has in its
Sneaky Tricks Closet. They call it Carnivore,
aptly enough. It's a kind of cyberspace
vacuum cleaner software that virtually inhales
millions of emails and extracts the 'meat' of
them.
The FBI can slap Carnivore onto any intemet
service provider and glean whatever nuggets
they're after. It means the Feds can monitor
every e-mail coming to and going from that
service. An FBI spokesman says using
Carnivore is no more sinister than getting a
wiretap. Sure. A wiretap that covers millions of
people at once.
Galloping busybodyism is not an American
phenomenon. Over in Britain an estimated 1.5
million closed circuit television cameras keep
Raymond
Canon
The
International
Scene
foreign country in which to invest for those
who are averse to any high level of risk taking,
those who are not unduly bothered by such
things might consider a number of countries.
There are also some real surprises; one year
recently the most lucrative country in which to
invest was Turkey. Another year it was the Far
East. The latter was also the worst in 1991.
Do I always get my predictions right? No, of
course not, but I did pull my Asiatic stocks out
and switch to Europe before the 1997 debacle
mentioned above. That saved me a
considerable amount of money.
Your friendly investment counsellor may tell
you that a wonderful stock from Lower
Slobovia has appreciated 50 per cent. That is
probably great for those who bought it last year
or whenever but don't pay too much attention
to such claims. Instead find out over how long
a period this appreciation took place.
There is a practice in the profession called
"regression to the mean" which shows how a
stock has performed over a long period of time.
You should not be surprised to learn- that in
most cases the real growth is much closer to
the average than the 50 per cent would
indicate.
If you are convinced that you have invested
wisely in foreign stocks, remember that, even
while you are going through the trials and
tribulations mentioned above, you are probably
in it for the long, not the short haul. Don't
panic! Be prepared to go with the flow as it
were. If the fundamentals of the stock are
good, stick with it.
The same holds true, by the way, for
domestic stocks.
I never get tired of point out that stocks, like
exchange rates, are the most neurotic of
track of some 60 million citizens. You find the
monitors in pubs, in grocery stores, in bus
depots and train stations. Shoppers on Oxford
Street may not be aware of it but there are 16
cameras trained on them - all connected to
Maryfebone police station.
Pity? Never in Canada, you say? Allow me to
introduce you to Echelon - because your
government sure as hell won't be telling you
about it.
Echelon is a new, hush-hush global satellite
web run by the U.S., Britain, New Zealand,
Australia - and Canada. Echelon can monitor
phone calls, faxes and any internet
communications coming from your house or
mine.
There are all kinds of applications, from
marketing surveys, to monitoring employees to
eavesdropping on internet chat rooms.
The most chilling thing about Echelon,
Carnivore and the other Cybersnoops is the
rationale their defenders invariably offer. As
one booster put it: "If you've done
nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry
about."
Right. That's what Heinrich Himmler used to
say when people complained about the
Gestapo.
Paranoid? Could be. You know the old
riddle: How many paranoids does it take to
screw in a lightbulb?
Who wants to know?
financial instruments and their value can
change direction the minute there is a sneeze
from the president or chief executive officer of
some international conglomerate. This
neurosis means that stocks are frequently
overvalued or undervalued, all of which adds
to the confusion.
While it is certainly advisable to start as
early as possible, don't feel you have to max
out on your RSPs each year as some advisors
like to suggest. That may be fine in later years
when the house is paid for and the kids are
grown up and on their own but it is impossible
for most families to buy a house, raise children
and invest the maximum amount allowable for
RSPs.
One of the blandishments suggested how
rich you would be now if 'you had invested
$4,000 a year, 30 years ago. Well, most people
did not have that sort of money then so the
whole exercise is meaningless other than to
show you what compound interest will do to
your investment over a period of time.
Do the best you can financially each year and
don't lost any sleep over it. While you are at it,
you might try to invest regularly rather than
leave it to those first two months of each year.
Finally, don't be afraid to do a bit of studying
on your own so that you are not totally
unacquainted with RSPs in general and foreign
investments in particular. Find out what
industries look most likely to enjoy long term
growth, even while their stock fluctuates. What
currencies are expected to remain hard, that is,
acceptable as a stable medium of exchange all
over the world?
There is an old saying that time spent in
reconnaissance is seldom wasted. It is certainly
valid here.
Final Thought
People ask you for criticism, but they only
want praise.
— William Somerset Maugham
We're all scrutinized
0 h, we've all said it, done it, heard it.
The complaints about how someone
has it so much better than us. How if
we had their job we would put a lot n'(ore into
it. How their job is a piece of cake or that they
make way too much money for what they do.
Not that we actually know how hard they
work, or how much better their job really is.
But we certainly have a good perception of it.
On the next page of this issue you will
discover the first in a series of stories to appear
regularly for the next few weeks.
The idea behind them came about as most
people-oriented stories are derived, from
people. A couple of winters ago, a neighbour,
who happens to work for the county, stopped
me one day and said he was going to take me
out in a plow. Great, I said. But winter, as has
been its practice in recent years, turned mild
and the idea fizzled.
Then came November 2000 and the return of
Winter As We Used To Know It. Travelling to
work through a milky haze one morning I
remembered the aforementioned promise. And
with it came the realization that seeing the day
of a snowplow operator sounded not just like
fun, but interesting.
I also saw the potential in expanding. Thus,
I began to consider the many professions,
some maligned, others taken for granted, some
curiosities, and started to compile a list. Is this
one as boring as I think? Is that one as
exciting? Is this one as easy as it appears? Is
that one truly above the heads of normal folk?
Contacts were made, some successfully and,
I was ready to roll.
The experience, to date, has been eye-
opening. Certainly I approached each example
sympathetically; it was not my intent to
malign or cast blame; but I was also they, with
an open mind, to relate what I saw and how the
experience felt. .
What I did see is that if we envy a person
their job it is because we probably don't know
what that job really is. Though a simple day in
the life can't possibly tell the whole story, it's
a fairly detailed precis, that has taught me
quite a bit. The people I spent time with
showed me not just the pleasant realities of
their work, but the difficulties that accompany
every job.
It has made me their champion in a way
because now I know. When I hear a complaint
regarding snowplow operators for example, I
find myself jumping to their defence. I saw
first-hand how quickly those roads filled back
in. And where once I would have joined the
angry mob chanting, "Why don't they have
those plows on the road?" I realize that things
are not always as they appear.
This. is not to say that the system in which
these people work may be operating in the best
way. That's a whole other set of shoes to walk
in. But it is, from what I have seen thus far, a
safe assumption that there are no perfect jobs.
If you don't care for the results, it's quite likel!,
you couldn't achieve them either.
What is important, is that the people I spent
time with seem to truly like what they do.
Their work is important to them and they do
the best job they can within the guidelines they
are given.
Sure, there are always bad apples. But it
might be wise when compelled to generalize
and cast stones, that people consider their
own work is probably not escaping similar
scrutiny.
About foreign RSP investments