Well, I actually appreciate your point of view (other than your statements about Canadian weather. And yes we do kayak in the snow and it's fun!!!)
So I guess the question is, how come the US and Europe have thriving car manufacturing sectors? Those production jobs pay pretty well right? How come those sectors are alive there but not here? And does it matter at the end of the day? Sure we lost the car industry, but unemployment is at record lows and there's plenty of demand for the same type of manual labour in the commodities, property and infrastructure markets no? Capitalism destroys and creates new industries all the time, that's just life.
You're totally right on the money regarding transfer pricing, but that's a huge issue almost everywhere - it doesn't matter if you give corporations a 10% tax rate, if they see someone else offering 2% they'll do whatever it takes to transfer profits into the lower tax jurisdiction. I think that's why the G20 agreed to a global minimum tax rate starting at 15%.
Anyway, on WBC, I would be the biggest buy in the world if Peter King provided some type of grand vision in the latest announcement and re-invested a big chunk of that $3.5 billion buyback in upgrading its core technology and growth. Instead, he's going blow it all on accounting gimmicks and cutting costs which will be awful for employee morale and put Westpac even further behind CBA.
(20min delay)