Page 38 - Off Grid East Cost Spring 2017

Investor-Owned Banks VS the People
By Tom Webb
Are you puzzled or upset or angry by the CBC’s recent Go Public revelations about banks serving their investors at your expense? You need to ask, ‘What is the purpose of a bank?’ It is not to provide you with financial services or good advice. The purpose of a bank, the reason it was incorporated, was to maximize the return to its shareholders. Anything it does is done to achieve that purpose.
How do big investor-owned companies maximize their profits?
Simple. They cut the cost of supplies by getting them at the cheapest possible prices regardless of how the supplier treats his workers. They pay workers as little as possible. They maximize their income from your bank fees. They sell products that are best for profits - not for customers. When a bank does any of these
things, it is simply doing what its investors created
it for and this is why you see so much destructive behaviour from banks and other investor owned firms. Remember as well that millions of Canadians have pension funds regulated by government. The regulator, and pensioners, demand that those funds seek the highest possible return. They are seriously discouraged from ‘ethical’ or ‘socially responsible’ investments.
But don’t banks do ‘good’ things?
Clearly they do but only if it is profit neutral, adds
to profits, or a person with enough decision making authority decides to do the right thing. The banks have many, many good people in them as the CBC has discovered with Go Public. It is the structure that creates the pressure to do whatever is necessary to maximize returns – that, and the desire of CEOs and
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