Another day another dollar for all you Greedy Bankster Boyz EH Franky Boy McKenna?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/peter-armstrong-big-banks-1.4426733

The money machines we love to hate: profits soar at Canada's big banks

Don't hate banks for their big profits — after all, you probably own them through a mutual fund or even CPP

By Peter Armstrong, CBC News Posted: Dec 04, 2017 5:00 AM ET

   
526 Comments
Commenting is now closed for this story.


 
David Raymond Amos

Methinks Banksters and other interested folks should Google the following

Harper and Bankers

  
John Sollows

Duff Conacher and Democracy Watch may be a pain, but we need them, and should listen. Party poopers can save us from future disaster.

David Raymond Amos

@John Sollows I spoken to the lawyer I call Duffy personally. More importantly sent him hard copy of my concerns in 2004. I know for a fact that Conacher is just another lawyer who says the right things while assisting in the coverup. Its called "controlled opposition".

David Raymond Amos

@John Sollows BTW for the benefit of CBC if Duff Conacher and Democracy Watch consider the comment above as libelous they can feel free to sue me but they should be very wary of the counterclaim that I would file in a heartbeat.

Michael G. L. Geraldson

I do most of my banking online. The final staw with my previous bank was when they started charging service fees for me to transfer money electronically from one account to the other. I complained vehemently and even though we had a long standing relationship and assets with them they did nothing. I shopped around and switched to a seniors account elsewhere. Now I don't pay a cent in fees unless I use a competitors ATM. Even money orders and certified cheques are free. If you're a senior shop around it's worth it!

David Raymond Amos

@Michael G. L. Geraldson I got one of those accounts out of the gate once I settled back in my Native Land to live out my last days

David Raymond Amos

@Roger Drisdelle "I guess i'm screwed for the next 30 years"

I fear that may be the case particularly if the markets take a very predictable nosedive.

  

Alice P Lynne

When one has a license to create the national currency out of thin air it's hard not to run at a profit;

https://lop.parl.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/2015-51-e.html?cat=economics#a3

"Whenever a bank makes a loan, it simultaneously creates a matching deposit in the borrower's bank account, thereby creating new money (see Appendix B). Most of the money in the economy is, in fact, created within the private banking system."

David Raymond Amos

@Alice P Lynne True

  

Bob Gordon

In other words as long as the banks are making money "the end justifies the means" regardless of the "means".
Switched to a credit union many years ago and have never regretted it

David Raymond Amos

@Bob Gordon "Switched to a credit union many years ago and have never regretted it"

Methinks you are a wise man to avoid the banks as much as possible. However our CPP funds etc are invested in these Banksters

David Raymond Amos

@Henri Bianchi I can tell you horror stories all day about banksters and a few about credit unions too. However the Banksters are pure evil and their malice towards us all is intentional. The credit unions do make some big mistakes but at least they are easier to deal with because they are usually local people and the mistakes are not usually intentional.

  

Ashley Zacharias

Banks make record profits, airlines make record profits, communications companies make record profits, oil companies make record profits, pharmaceutical companies make record profits, and on and on. Meanwhile, the middle class gets smaller and poorer every year. Where's that trickle-down that we were promised? Why aren't we getting some of that money back into our own pockets? Don't tell me that the wealthy people who are vacuuming up all that money were lying about how the economy works? Surely they haven't been playing us for suckers in their giant con game. Surely not.

Tim Burr

@Ashley Zacharias
Perhaps you should join the other side.
Spend less, buy Canadian bank stocks. Enjoy the dividends.

David Raymond Amos

@Ashley Zacharias "Surely they haven't been playing us for suckers in their giant con game. Surely not"

Methinks the lady doth jest too much but I love it anyway.

David Raymond Amos

@Tim Burr FYI We are already there For instance check where your CPP funds are invested

David Raymond Amos

@James Murray "Gimme gimme gimme" ???

Methinks you are a Harper fan N'esy Pas? Well please allow me to give you a tip. Google this

Harper and Bankers

  

Ashley Zacharias

Paying $30 a year to join an organization that tells me to shop around when there is no free market to shop around in? Nuts to that. The government licenses five major banks and prohibits the entry of new ones so that we are forced to patronize one of those. When the government creates an oligopoly, then the government has the responsibility to protect us from predatory behaviour by that oligopoly. We pay a lot of taxes for that protection, so it's past time for the government to do its job.

And don't tell me that I own bank stock. Maybe we all own a little, but my share is so small as to be inconsequential, either for my pocketbook or for my ability to influence the banks' practices. A small, wealthy proportion of the population owns more bank shares than all the rest of us put together. They tell the banks what to do, not us.

And don't tell me to use a credit union. I do. But when the five banks set the standard operating procedures, the credit unions follow suit. They aren't going to curb their equally predatory practices until the banks are brought to heel.

David Raymond Amos

@Ashley Zacharias "And don't tell me to use a credit union. I do. But when the five banks set the standard operating procedures, the credit unions follow suit. They aren't going to curb their equally predatory practices until the banks are brought to heel."

Well put You have a fan in me.

David Raymond Amos

@Bob Fuchs I seldom employ a barber but I would like to be introduced to the two dozen major banks that you speak of.

David Raymond Amos

@Stephane Kwong My poison was to run for public office and sue the Crown etc.

 

Andrew Lamoureux

According to David Graeber at the London School of Economics, JP Morgan Chase, the largest bank in America, made 85% of their profits based on penalties. In other words, they made a bunch of somewhat arbitrary rules that people are bound to break and then make money when people inevitably break them.

It makes you wonder how much of the profit in Canadian Banks is made that way. I'd love some research. Banking may be very much like the airline business.

I wonder why the people who paid those penalties agreed to it?

David Raymond Amos

@Andrew Lamoureux From personal experience I have become fairly familiar with the evil antics of Jamie Dimon and his buddy Stephen Cutler JP Morgan Chase. Trust that penalties to the lowly consumer is not the way they gather up most of the gold.

  

Kent Worthy

I was reading the story and thought, I wonder what percentage all of us pay in general terms on taxes (all levels), for profits charges, fees, and services charges.

Makes me wonder if for every dollar earned, how much of that is raked back in without us really knowing the actual percentage.

David Raymond Amos

@Kent Worthy Perhaps you and other curious folks should read Fabian's old story entitled "I Want The Earth Plus Five Percent"

Charly Vaughan

An arm of the arrogant Conservative party, profits before people

Alice P Lynne

@Charly Vaughan
How very liberal of you.

David Raymond Amos

@Alice P Lynne LOL

  

Steve Duncan

There are 2 things you need in this life to be happy.....health and lots of money, anyone who says different obviously doesn't have money. Socialist's seem to think it is okay to have other peoples money given to them for doing nothing in return......never going to happen.

David Raymond Amos @Steve Duncan "There are 2 things you need in this life to be happy.....health and lots of money"

I strongly disagree and I ain't religious. Methinks lots of folks with poor health (including myself) can live happy lives without lots of money. I truly believe if you seek true happiness you need to simply nurture a great conscience then using it as a guide act ethically and with empathy as you deal with your fellow man and the ladies and children in particular.

BTW Ever seen the movie called Citizen Kane? If so do you recall the point of the story? Better yet how about a book a lot of religious folks believe in? Its called the King James Bible. Within it you will find this interesting question. "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

  
Robert McAlpine

Banks have been especially profitable since the WWII. Indeed, every quarter seems to be another record breaker. But banks are not a good employer for all but the top executives. Lower level staff are harassed to sell products even to customers who can't afford and don't need those products. Banks are among the first to dump employees for off-shore call centers and automation. In deed, we have all read many instances of these job-destroying actions on this website.

Banks may be good to have in your investment portfolio; but they are not good when you work for them or find yourself deeply in debt to them.

David Raymond Amos

@Robert McAlpine "Banks may be good to have in your investment portfolio; but they are not good when you work for them or find yourself deeply in debt to them."

Truer words were never spoken about Banksters

 

James Robson

I do not accept the premise that we should stop criticizing the banks just because pension plans own some of their stock. They shamelessly charge ever-higher fees for even simple bank accounts thanks to asleep-at-the-switch federal regulators who permitted them to wipe out the trust company competition. They flog their own investments whether they suit the customer's needs or not. And they are quite happy with the now generations out of date
CDIC account insurance limit of a miserable $100K. Are they self-serving? Exclusively.

David Raymond Amos

@James Robson "I do not accept the premise that we should stop criticizing the banks just because pension plans own some of their stock."

I wholeheartedly agree Perhaps folks should Google the following 3 words:

Fundy Royal Debate

 

Ida Pomme

The banks keep wages low by hiring FW and laying off Canadian. Big profits for banks means nothing to working Canadians that can't pay their bills.

David Raymond Amos

@Ida Pomme True

 

Brent Grywinski

I am glad the banks are making a healthy profit. I am concerned about what the banks are doing to make that profit like excessive fees, jobs sent overseas, and possibly breaking the law.

Content disabled.
David Raymond Amos

@Brent Grywinski I am confused To me its seems that you are saying that you are happy that a criminal gang was making a profit merely because they were playing their wicked games with your pension funds.

 

Content disabled.

David Raymond Amos

@Brent Grywinski Oh dear I reply to you and I get the dreaded "Content disabled." notice Methinks the CBC hierarchy is reading my blog about this though.

  
sakaa Loues

Yet .. they keep reducing work force in Canada and create job overseas. They make money here, enjoy tax breaks but and create job outside Canada.

And of course our bank fees goes up year after year.

Virgil Caine

@sakaa Loues,
That's sunny days. What do you think JT is doing in China?

David Raymond Amos

@Virgil Caine Why is I start humming an old tune when I see a name I don't believe?


  
john smith

RBC earns a billion dollars a month. Try getting a mortgage or loan.

David Raymond Amos 

@Stephane Kwong "When I was a new grad, with a very well paying consulting job, they wouldn't give me a mortgage. I could have paid it twice in a month"

The Banksters have term called "Liquidity"

Methinks they are holding on the cash and waiting for the the next nosedive in the markets. Then they can buy whatever they wish for a mere pittance. The Banksters cannot do so if they have their money tied up in mortgages with low interest rates that will likely default with the market downturn anyway

 
Henri Bianchi

I have zero sympathy for anyone who complains about bank fees and service charges.

There are fee-free options available, for example through Simplii (former Presidents Choice).

Conduct your banking in a manner that does not attract fees.

David Raymond Amos

@Virgil Caine "Of course it does. But, we are not talking anything illegal."

What is with this "WE" stuff? Speak for yourself.

I know why I am suing the Crown right now. If you want a few clues as to why that is perhaps your should serf the Internet with the following words.

Harper and Bankers

or

David Amos Bank Fraud

 
Fred Volkman

An ATM costs you nothing if you use your own bank when it comes to cash withdrawals and deposits. Our choice whether to feed the bear!

David Raymond Amos

@Lily O'Loughlin "But the cost of using those credit cards is actually embedded in the price of the goods you buy."

YUP and everybody pays for that whether they use a credit card or not

The money machines we love to hate: profits soar at Canada's big banks

Don't hate banks for their big profits — after all, you probably own them through a mutual fund or even CPP

By Peter Armstrong, CBC News Posted: Dec 04, 2017 5:00 AM ET

Canadians pay millions of dollars in bank fees every year, but if you own a mutual fund or contribute to CPP, you have a share in those profits. (David Donnelly/CBC)

It's a staggering sum of money. So huge it's hard to get your head around. The Royal Bank of Canada made nearly $11.5 billion in profit over the past year. That's profit. Royal is tops, but the other banks are no slouch in the profit department either.

Now, square that with all the seemingly petty fees, the annoying ATM charges, the aggressive sales tactics, and in some cases sales people breaking the law. Put together, you can see how the banks make such a mountain of money. You can also see why so many Canadians love to hate them.
But life, like banking, is more complex.

Most Canadians, even while we gripe about all those fees and all those profits, are investors and therefore owners of those same entities we love to hate.

Whether you know it or not …

If you have even the most simple investment portfolio, you almost assuredly own bank stocks.

Royal Bank made a record $11.5 billion in profit this year, numbers revealed this week. (Don Pittis/CBC)

"Every mutual fund in this country holds bank (stocks)," says Conor Bill, managing director of Mt. Auburn Capital. Just about every mutual fund invests in the banks. Banks make up nearly 17 per cent of the returns of any fund that tracks the TSX.

There's an old adage, that every time you complain about bank fees, you should buy bank stocks.
Bill says even if you have no such investments and only pay into the Canada Pension Plan, you're still a stakeholder. The banks, after all, are among the CPP's biggest public investments in Canada.

So, what's good for the banks is good for Canadians. As a sector, financial services account for more than a million Canadian jobs. The Conference Board of Canada says financial services make up 6.8 per cent of Canadian GDP, and exports from the sector have more than doubled over the past decade, reaching $11.7 billion in 2015 — more than any other sector.

RBC 'too big to fail'

So, the Canadian economy depends on those banks churning out quarter after quarter of profits. To an extent, the global economy depends on Canadian banks, too. Earlier this month, RBC was added to a list of 30 of the world's most systemically important banks.

Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch says Canada's big banks are far too cozy with the regulator that's supposed to be in charge of them. (Mark Blinch/Reuters)

The designation, by the Swiss-based Financial Stability Board, essentially deems RBC too big to fail.

It's considered big enough and important enough to have a major impact on the global financial system. The downside is that the bank is now held to a higher standard in terms of how much capital it's required to keep on hand.

But ethics watchdogs say here at home much more must be done to protect consumers.

"What's the good of making a bit of money through your shares," asks Duff Conacher from Democracy Watch, "[if] it's going to be taken out of your other pocket in gouging fees and interest rates. You don't end up ahead."

Consumers need protection

Democracy Watch wants the federal government to take a series of steps to further regulate the banking industry. It wants higher fines when rules are broken, more disclosure and a less cozy relationship between the banks and the main regulatory body, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada.

Conacher says the FCAC hasn't done unannounced audits since 2005. Even worse, the agency tipped off the banks about its last one, Conacher says.

Canada's financial services exports have more than doubled over the past decade, reaching $11.7 billion in 2015. (Canadian Press)

That's why Democracy Watch is calling for the creation of a new organization — a Financial Consumer Organization that could properly represent consumers. Banks could be obligated to include membership information in any mass mailings or e-mails to their customers. Conacher says it wouldn't cost the banks or the government a penny.

"It solves every problem, for no cost," says Conacher.

The model was actually proposed originally in 1998 by the MacKay Task force and committees in both the Senate and the House of Commons. Conacher now has a petition with 25,000 signatures lobbying the federal government to create a Financial Consumer Organization in Canada.

Informed, empowered

"Whether you're a laissez-faire or an interventionist economist, your assumption is the consumer is informed and empowered," says Conacher. "Right now they're neither."

Membership in his proposed organization would cost $30 a year, and if even 1 per cent of Canadians joined, it would have a budget of $9 million.

"There would be staff lawyers and people would get free legal advice and help shopping around," he says.

Conacher and Bill approach the banks from wildly different perspectives, but in a way they both agree on a few key points. We are all owners of those banks and we do all share in their success. And they'd both like to see more Canadians proactive in how they approach the financial system.

So, next time you're staring at the ATM or your bank statement in horror at the fees, remember: you're getting a piece of that back.