Banks here in Canada are constantly bragging about their stability and narcissisticly lauding their profit margins. Those huge multi-billion dollar profits are being generated in large part by the huge debt burden being carried by home 'owners' just like the pre-real estate bubble collapse profits of the US and European banks were. Banks everywhere are only to happy to re-finance, to give equity loans to the partying public to buy some more bling so their shareholders can roll in the profits secure in the knowledge that the corrupt politicians, elected by the bling blinded bozos, will bail them out once the clock strikes midnight.
Canadian banks are not immune to the vortex of over lending during the present Canadian housing bubble. As economies around the world slow down the commodity prices that support Canada's current good fortune will drop, followed by plummeting employment in the extraction sector which was once balanced by the manufacturing sector, before the dwindling manufacturing sector started shedding jobs willy-nilly due to Dutch Disease, globalization and dubious 'Free' Trade deals. At that point who's gonna buy all the over priced-over mortgaged real estate? How rosy will the banks profile be then? How quickly will they come crawling to the unemployed taxpayers of Canuckistan for a bailout?
There was a time when the Church was the most powerful institution in Western Society and few questioned its right to be so. In our society today by far the most powerful institutions are banks, supported by a web of financial structures which reinforce this power. It is time we questioned their right to be so mighty and to ask whose interests they serve.
