🚀 go-pugleaf

I recommend Bank of Montreal. From an emotional point of view, they
have one cool dude of a Chairman, who called for increased social
spending, the first ever such statement from a major bank's chairman in
recorded history. Then, from a bullish point of view, they started
flaunting the idea of them setting the interest rate, rather than
follow the Bank of Canada's rate. Now, I know that's a myth, or a fond
memory, rather than reality, since B of M's rate is presently not the
lowest of them all in every single type of mortgage, although their
rate is indeed the lowest in a few types. Next, from a security point
of view, I do know that many rich Hong Kong immigrants who came to
Toronto or Vancouver and sunk a substantial amount of money into the
residential real estate market and then rent out the houses do take out
their mortgage from the B of M. These mortgages practically never
default since most of these investors can pay for the whole thing in
cash, but choose not to because of the tax break they get. Now, my own
family (my dad, mom, and lil' ol me) is definitely Not Rich [tm], but
we bank exclusively at the B of M for everything. Furthermore, for
those of us used to laser printers, their mortgage statements are a
class act; concise, detailed, and supplied in a timely fashion, and so
are their MasterCard statements. Even though I do have a lot of
admiration for the Reichmann family's past abilities, the B of M has
only granted very small loans to Olympia & York, when you measure
by the amount of the loan. When measured by the percentage of the bank's
assets the loan makes up for, then B of M is really way down near
the bottom of the scale. As if that wasn't enough, Invester Line, a
discount broker house and self-directed RRSP management firm owned by
B of M even has a few Toronto hot line numbers handled by Cantonese-
speaking (a popular dialag of Chinese) staff.

Michael MY Hui          myhui@bnr.ca           Ottawa Canada