Bankers to Reap Record Bonus Haul

Yup. That's the headline in today's Globe & Mail Report on Business. After all the crap that's gone on during the past year and a bit, they're doing it to us again.

Patti and I were very, very lucky. We were one of the few who manufactured in Ontario and didn't lose our shirts, either through sour contracts, miscalculated quotes, uncooperative unions, poor designs, shoddy workmanship, or just bad luck. Basically, when you open your doors and stick your neck out, you're on your own. The odds are stacked against you. This applies to all self-employed folks, including artists, entreprenuers, inventors, builders, journalists, writers, architects, and convenience store operators.

Except, of course, if you're in the financial industry. The deeper the speculative hole you dig yourself into the better. The 'too big to fail' saying has been distorted into 'you're so big we're all afraid to let you fail'. The financial industry has no roots in reality. They don't manufacture anything, move anything, or design anything. They've embraced data processing technology in order to reduce employment and shuffle money faster. They can easily move our money into questionable investments without our permission. If the investment proves unwise, they are bailed out, at our expense. They place themselves on very high pedestals, claiming that it is they who enable all innovation and development.

We're in a very dangerous time. Governments are holding their interest rates below one percent to encourage the movement of money, while banks charge at least six percent for impossible to attain loans, over twenty percent on credit card balances, and much more than that on complicated overdraft fees.

Poor old Michael Moore. He keeps producing excellent documentaries exposing society's problems, but nobody every gets riled up enough to actually do something. Blogs and tweets are full of disdain (here's another one!), but our large corporations and financial institutions just keep raking in the money and doling it out as executive bonuses and shareholder dividends.

I'm very frustrated. Our kids and grandkids will be saddled with this mess, and all we can do is watch it happen.