I admit it is quite possible that palms were greased behind the scenes in selling off the 407 but I would take my chances with that than having lefties running the show with their inability to manage anything larger than a lemonade stand [e.g. hot dog carts are too tough for them to figure out].
Hmm...Right. Harris covers up the fact that his government put the government $4.1 billion dollars in the red by selling off government assets. Thats what you call managing?
With respect to your entertaining attempt at valuing the 407, I started to think about explaining the concept of present value of money to you and how you can't simply [that is not a shot at your thought process by the way] arithmatically total up 100 years worth of potential future cash flows to arrive at a current value right now. However, I'm sure the time share guys got you with that spiel: 'look how much you will save over the next 50 years' and I don't have time to tutor you on finances.
I never claimed that 407 ETR was worth 100B in present value, only that it was capable of generating 100B over the lifetime of the contract given to the consortium. If you want to take a stab a a real present value evaluation:
Balance sheet: The highway was constructed for 1.5 Billion dollars. The land it sits on could
conservatively valued at around 3.5 billion. Although they technically don't OWN the land... a 100 year lease in my opinion just about equivalent to ownership, and the value of the lease is at least 5 billion dollars. 407 ETR was sold with no accompanying debt, so from the outset, they sold a 5 billion dollar asset for 4.1 billion.
I'm not an investment banker, so forgive this analysis. I'd guess a good return on equity for a company with such low risk is around 10%. With an EBITDA of $440M (would have been pure profit for the gov't of Ontario, as they wouldn't have to pay taxes), which would put shareholder equity (outside of book value) at around 4.4 billion.
They sold an asset with a valuation of at least 9 billion dollars for 4.1 billion. Common Sense? Appently if you're Duang or Mike Harris
We need guys like Ford and Harris to come in and clean up after the lefties have made a mess of everything. All politicians will look after their supporters to some degree but I trust Ford a lot more than Miller kissing the ass of every union member that might vote for him. At least Ford's potential beneficiaries will have worked for the possible payoff as opposed to blood-sucking unions getting rich off our tax dollars.
And how would have Ford's beneficiaries worked for a possible payoff? The real payoff will be when Mr. Ford starts setting up his own 'untendered' contracts with his best friends to sell off the cities' services (He'll make it look tendered of course). And what its it with the union hatred around here. Not that I belong to a union. I don't. Unions can definitely lead to inefficiency and waste in SOME cases. But I'd hardly call unions bloodsucking compared to what some corporations are capable of (banks & credit card companies anyone?). And in terms of economic affect, I'd rather have the city pay the several thousand decently paid unionized workers contributing to the toronto/canadian economy, than have the city pay an outsourced company the same amount but who then pay their workers minimum wage, with all the profits only feed a few weathly owners. If you can find a single case of where a city outsourced services and SAVED money, I'll be amazed.
In any case, I know the mediocre prefer socialism and no-one bettering themselves. How are your buddies in the USSR, Cuba, North Korea, etc. doing?
Hmm... George W. Bush... Sarah Palin... Glenn Beck... those bastions of Capitalism real geniuses eh? I've never advocated communism, but as usual, anything that is pro-union, or government related at all is considered communism to you CONs.
Let's hope Ford does as good a job as Harris did; we need it.
Right. Harris did a fantastic job of downloading everything to the cities and absolving himself of any responsibility of the resulting mess... Remember Walkerton? Toronto still has $700 Million of downloaded services that it had to take over from "common sense" Mike. To you CONs, "Common Sense" is CONspeak for "Fuck everyone else".
