Oh, thats not hear enough profit, can you close some more sawmills please?

We wouldn’t want “Jimmy” to go without something under his christmas tree or in his christmas stocking.

My sympathies go out to the many people who will be losing their jobs in Quesnel and Houston, try to have a merry christmas anyway.

I’m glad the taxpayer could donate the millions it did recently so Canfor could realize their net profit.

If you look over the last 5 years Canfor has a net loss of $369 million and you even if you go back a full decade the profits are small for the size of the company. But for the left wing loonies even a single loonie profit is too much.

I am sure life styles of the rich and famous Jimmy P. will thank you for your loyalty and support ewitt.

Remember, the net income is normally the pre-tax income.

If there is no net income, there will be no tax going to the feds and province, other than the income tax paid by employees and property taxes going to the cities/regional districts in which the plants are located.

There may also be fees that may have to be paid to various governments.

what taxpayers money dragon?

gus and dow;

Umm… our carbon tax money that goes to these forest industry giants for every tree that they plant!

[url}http://wildernesscommittee.org/news/contentious_forest_carbon_program_could_cost_taxpayers_critics_charge[/url]

http://wildernesscommittee.org/news/contentious_forest_carbon_program_could_cost_taxpayers_critics_charge

Lets keep in mind that the numbers above are for the lumber segment of Canfor, not to be confused with the Pulp mills that they own. These mills (which all use fibre from the forest company) also make a profit. (Shareholders are basically the same)

Canfor over the past 5 years have made enough money to purchase five sawmills in North and South Carolina, perhaps **Gus** could explain how the purchase of these mills, with money generated in BC offset their profit numbers.??

Slight correction; Canfor now owns.

5 Mills in South Carolina
3 Mills in Alabama
1 Mill in St Foy Que.

Good point palopu.. CFP and CFX are two different corporations. But CFP is majority shareholder in CFX therfore gets a lot of dividend earnings from the CFX holdings as well. Good to see CFX stick with the divy for another quarter!!

” with money generated in BC” Huh? The money is generated from sales of which a vast majority is beyond bc borders. Even though the company lost $369 million over the last 5 years have more than enough cash flow and unused credit lines to cover the purchase.

The left wing has never been able to understand that a business profit is not analogous to ‘cash’, as in the difference between cash received minus cash disbursed.

It is rather, operationally, the difference between Sales and Expense, something quite different. (‘Expense’ is the “pushing forward in time”, under the rules and conventions of double-entry accrual accounting, of *today’s* corporate spending in terms of the actual expenditure of ‘cash’ derived from earnings or borrowings or shareholder investment, to ‘expense’ them against *tommorrow’s* Sales. Which are prospectively greater than *today’s* Sales as a result of *today’s* spending. Confusing? Yes, it is, but that is how business accounting measures operational profit.) It is only meaningful when viewed in the context of a Company’s complete set of books.

Which include the Balance Sheet, to which the Profit and Loss Statement is closed and finalised as an increase (if there’s been a profit), in Assets over Liabilities. And the Statement of Cash Flow. Which shows where the money is coming from (earnings or borrowings), and where it is going to.

In a period of economic expansion most companies will actually be SPENDING more than they are simultaneously taking in over their sales counters in terms of their actual cash flow, (the difference made up through borrowing, generally), yet will typically be booking a profit.

It is also not all that uncommon, under certain circumstances, for a company to be booking a profit, but actually be bankrupt and unable to pay its bills as they come due. This can and does happen if its cash flow is not properly managed.

The left wing has also never been able to understand that the ‘rich’ do not hold their wealth in money, but rather in Assets PRICED in money. For taxes to be imposed that will “soak the rich” to supposedly aid the poor, Assets that are ‘priced’ in money often have to be sold to GET the money necessary to pay the taxes. The owners of the privately held companies Canfor purchased in the south-east USA have a little something called the ‘death tax’ to look forward to, as they reach their so-called golden years. Google “Kevin Hancock of the Death Tax”, and you’ll find out what that’s all about. And its potential impact on retaining a private, closely held company intact if one of its owners dies.

And further, the left wing has never grasped that the economy is CREDITARY. Karl Marx never figured that out, and all his successors have followed suit. They go on believing instead that the “poor are poor because the rich are rich.” In any country that has the capacity to produce more than it’s citizens can, or want to, consume, that’s just plain nonsense. They’re “poor” because of a correctable flaw in the way accounting currently works, and its effects on the ‘macro-economy’ (the economy taken as a whole). If the left wing would learn that, and the right wing, too, we could very easily abolish poverty without removing a dime from the pockets of anyone who is now considered ‘rich’.

Correction:- That should be “Kevin Hancock ON the Death Tax.” Mr. Hancock is a principal owner and head of Hancock Lumber in Maine, (which hasn’t been bought by Canfor, or anyone else. Yet.)

What he’s talking about in the video is undoubtedly one of the major reasons ‘why’ the formerly independent lumber companies in the USA have sold out to larger, international concerns like Canfor (and West Fraser, Interfor, etc.)

“The left wing has also never been able to understand that the ‘rich’ do not hold their wealth in money, but rather in Assets PRICED in money.”~ socredible

So what about the world’s richest rich people who are hiding up $36 TRILLION dollars in offshore accounts?

“The global super-rich are stashing trillions of dollars offshore with the help of some of the world’s biggest banks, putting billions of dollars out of the taxman’s reach and masking wealth inequality’s true heights.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/29/wealthy-stashing-offshore_n_3179139.html

As a further aside to all this, the forest industry is a ‘cyclical industry’. This is because, primarily, of the way continuously needed “new credit” currently enters the overall economy.

Since the end of World War Two the major vehicle for that new credit’s entry has been through the new home mortgage. One of the reasons for the recent ‘sub-prime mortgage crisis’ that touched off the recession we are now supposedly recovering from, was that the USA is rapidly running out of people who can qualify for a regular new home mortgage.

Both because the rate of home ownership, (prior to the recession), had already reached unprecedented heights over the years since the war, and because those still homeless often now do not have sufficient incomes to qualify for a mortgage. And the number of Americans in that latter position has been growing.

The housing market has typically been a ‘boom and bust’ one because of the erratic nature of credit expansions and contractions. Which are based on whether prospective business profits, overall, look like they will actually continue to materialise as projected.

Business loans, the financial credit that banks issue to firms to fund their operations, are repaid through business profits. Those profits are derived from Sales continuing to be larger than business Costs (what the business has spent) being Expensed against them.

The ONLY way business Sales currently can continually be larger than business Expense is for the ongoing Costs of business being Expensed to actually materialise as CONSUMER INCOMES. In the SAME cycle of production those Costs are incurred in.

This is what is NOT happening. With increasing automation, mechanisation, and many other ways of displacing Consumer Incomes, the overall flow of business Costs into Prices at the point of final retail will exceed the flow of overall Incomes that are available to Consumers capable of liquidating those Costs.

In such a situation, ongoing business profits, necessary to repay bank loans as agreed when they were issued, cannot be sustained.

When the rate of defaults on loan agreements rises, the banks, quite naturally, ‘choke off’ the issuance of further loans. There is no point, from their perspective, of “throwing good money after bad.” But when they do this, the contraction of credit CAUSES other loans that WOULD HAVE BEEN “good” to become “bad.” And we’re again in a recession.
There are those who believe, fervently, that they can ‘make money’ through this process. Can they? Really? THINK about it. And what is REALLY happening.

People# 1, do you really think that “money” in an “offshore account” held by some rich guy just sits there, in that bank? Like Scrooge McDuck and his Money Bin in the old Disney cartoons? That the rich just pay some bank somewhere to lock up $ 36 trillion in their vaults? While they watch ongoing inflation reduce its purchasing power to near nothing, the way a US buck put in a jar in 1950 would only purchase 13 cents worth of what it would’ve bought then some 30 years later? If that WERE the case, what is anyone concerned about? They won’t be ‘rich’ very long.

Thanks, Socredible, for the concise and accurate explanations.
metalman.

Socredible is definitely on the right track with this one. Years ago it took 500 workers to run a mill. I now work in a mill that has around 15 workers per shift, not including three trades people and one supervisor. While this arrangement greatly benefits the company, the workers that might have worked here don’t have the good jobs that would afford them homes, cars, ect, ect……

I understand that these companies don’t owe anyone a thing. However they should also realise that soon there won’t BE anyone around who can afford to purchase their products in the volume that THEY need to survive.

Socredible wrote: “do you really think that “money” in an “offshore account” held by some rich guy just sits there, in that bank?”

What a stupid answer!!!

Why do you not tell People#1 what actually happens to that “money”. Why don’t you tell why some companies are registered in “tax haven” countries?

It is a fact of life that such banks and such companies exist and that they exist in those locations for those who, like anyone or any company looking for a service, think that it is the service which best fits its needs.

Or are you denying that such banks and companies exist and that their holdings are not significant?

You seem to have this aversion to the left. Do you really think that when it comes to tax evasion that there is a difference between left and right?

Socredible wrote: “The left wing has never been able to understand that a business profit is not analogous to ‘cash’, as in the difference between cash received minus cash disbursed.”

Tell that to “left wing” China.

metalman wrote: “Thanks, Socredible, for the concise and accurate explanations.”

I assume that was written with tongue in cheek. LOL

Socredible wrote: “There are those who believe, fervently, that they can ‘make money’ through this process. Can they? Really? THINK about it”

So I have thought about it and not for very long because I have an example in my very own family.

My grandfather did. He was in the goldsmith business. He had the opportunity to buy tangible goods from people who did not know the value of the goods they brought to him, goods that had been sitting around in homes and they were caught in the “no money” squeeze. They parted with an asset which was sitting around, he parted with an asset that was “liquid” and could be used right away.

He took the asset which he believed would grow again in time and put it into a safe place where it sat until he was able to reap the profits when people again had liquid assets to buy tangible goods.

And there are tens of thousands of others who can take advantage of times like that.

ewitt. The money was generated by sales beyond BC Borders. Of course it was, whats your point???

The money was then used for purchases of Companies in the USA, rather than being invested in upgrading, local mills, and establishing a long term strategy for BC Mills.

In addition the majority of the money came from the rebate that Canadian Lumber Companies got when the softwood lumber dispute was settled. In Canfor’s case it was in the area of $500 Million.

My point is, is that these Companies are not as hard done by as some would have you to believe.

On another note. Just because someone doesn’t agree with the Corporate philosophy in this Country, it doesn’t make him a **leftie**.

In my opinion **lefties** have little or concept of how business is run in the Country. Having said that, they are no more in the dark than those so called **righties** that also have no concept.

Gus, to tell People#1 “what happens to all that money” (that goes into offshore banks in some tax haven), would likely involve a post longer than book length. But generally, in the trillions of dollars he’s talking about, it does not just ‘sit there’ in an offshore bank in the form of cash in a safety deposit box. While inflation reduces its purchasing power, year after year after year. Without even any miniscule amount of interest being received on it to offset that.

Which is my point. The ‘rich’ do NOT hold their wealth, not very much of it at least, in the form of money. They hold it in ASSETS that are PRICED in money. The money in the offshore bank account will be invested. It may be invested in gold bullion and held in that form, but it will NOT remain as cash.

Gus wrote:-“Socredible wrote: “The left wing has never been able to understand that a business profit is not analogous to ‘cash’, as in the difference between cash received minus cash disbursed.”

Tell that to “left wing” China.
——————————————–
China has moved considerably away from being ‘left-wing’, where every evil was blamed on the capitalist and his profits.

They did so because their leadership finally realised the inanity of trying to make everyone artificially ‘equal’, and keeping them that way.

Capitalism, when it comes right down to it, is really only a way of fixing prices relative to costs.

Profit, in its fundamental sense, is the ‘feedback mechanism’ that enables consumers to determine what they want produced, and who they want to produce it.

Without an accounting system that is set up to determine profit (or loss), there is no way for the consumer to express his preferences on what he wants, or does not want.

This was the great failing of the Soviet system. They had no way, having outlawed profit and destroyed the accounting system that recorded it after their revolution in 1917, of determining what should be made that their citizens wanted.

So they kept most things in short supply, and their consumers had to take what was offered or do without.

Their economy was hopelessly inefficient, as would be any economy where the emphasis is not on determining, making and delivering the actual goods and services we all need and desire as efficiently as possible, but in making work instead. It’s sad to see us trying to emulate them when we should know by now that simply won’t work.

socredible states; “The ‘rich’ do NOT hold their wealth, not very much of it at least, in the form of money. They hold it in ASSETS that are PRICED in money. The money in the offshore bank account will be invested. It may be invested in gold bullion and held in that form, but it will NOT remain as cash.”

You just don’t get it do you? The money held in oversea’s accounts is NOT their money and NOT theirs to make decisions on how it is invested or held. That money legally belongs to their governments via taxes, but the rich “hide” that money in offshore tax haven accounts to keep it from their governments.

Perhaps we can step back a bit and look at the bigger picture here;

“A high proportion of this tax dodging is taking place on David Cameron and George Osborne’s watch. Of the $18.47 trillion (£12tn) that Oxfam estimates is being held by individuals in tax havens around the globe, over a third – $7.18 trillion (£4.7tn) – “is sitting in accounts” in British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies.”

“The international agency said it is a moral outrage and a scandal that this is taking desperately needed cash from poor countries as well as from citizens who are being hit by austerity measures closer to home.”

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/blogs/2013/05/tax-haven-cash-enough-to-end-extreme-poverty

You can go on and on about “how” and in what “form” those trillions of dollars are being held in overseas accounts, but to most of us, the whole situation is absolutely disgusting!!!