Québec Droite

Article du 6 Janvier 2009, Caisse de dépot trainwreck?, Diane Francis,

Financial Post Caisse, if you please, answer these So here are some blunt questions that the press in Quebec, taxpayers and workers of Quebec and opposition party members should be posing for public responses:

1. Has the Caisse been hurt, its trades held in limbo or unexecuted; or its assets tied up in bankruptcy as a result of the demise of Lehman Brothers?

2. Scuttlebutt on Wall Street is that the Caisse has liquidity problems due to its close relationship with Lehman, is this true?

3. On pages 146 to 148 of the Caisse's 2007 financial statements labelled "Liability" the portfolios are added up: Advances from the general fund $13.7 billion; securities sold under repurchase agreements $48.59 billion; short selling $26.3 billion and loans and notes payable $47.4 billion. That's a lot of money in shorting and swapping and how much was Lehman?

4. On ABCP valuation being too low: The writedown in December 2007 was 25% but since then writedown charges for others have been higher so is the Caisse going to match these higher writedowns this year?

5. On the fact that real estate values have not been written down, will the Caisse be doing so this year?

6. On the issue of IT problems, a source says the biggest problem is that the upshot is that risks are not evaluated on a real-time basis as in other pension plans. Is this true?

7. Why did the Caisse exclude losses when justifying management bonuses both for the recently departed CEO and his predecessor?

8. How does the Caisse and Ontario Teachers compare in terms of overhead? In return over their own benchmarks?

9. How much was lost on commodities in 2008?