Canadian Bankers Association now calling for bank mergers....good grief.....why am I not surprised?

Globe and Mail: No-merger rule ‘out of step,' bank group says



Sure, why not strike when the iron is hot?.........Harper is in the business of wrecking the country and passing out favours... what the hey....he takes all his marching orders from the bank/lifeco dominated CCCE anyway.

Just as was the case when the CCCE got their way on the income trust issue and the reversal of the interest deductibility measure. (Opposing changes to interest deductibility was a complete exercise in hypocrisy, since preserving interest deductibility is simply preserving the right to service interest on debt with pretax cash flows. Corporations want desperately to preserve that feature, but certain of their kind are hell bent on preventing the parallel arrangement to exist with income trusts.)

Apart from the banks themselves, (read: shareholders and employee stock option holders), this has got to be good for Manulife and Power Corp who can parlay this bank merger thingy to their benefit and expand into banking themselves. Goodbye the former " four pillars " of finance. Let's have bank mergers followed by massive layoffs in a field of high paying jobs, with high multiplier effects. That way it’s easier for Goldman Sachs and Wall Street to fill the newly created void. Do you suppose Mark Carney is supportive? He’s a newly minted banker now.

Hey, here's a really dumb idea. Let's consolidate more risk into the hands of fewer institutions , that way CIBC can bring the economy to the brink instead of just themselves every five years or so, along with the other added virtues of less competition and less need for innovation. Who knows, maybe ATM fees can even go up? That should give Jack L’ATM-fee a real sense of accomplishment. Jack does some of his best work for the CCCE, even though he's too thick to even realize it, or attempt to understand it .

Here’s a novel thought. If we've had five major banks for the past 30 plus years, and the country has grown by 50% over that time, why do we need fewer banks going forward? Doesn't compute. Meanwhile how do Canadians possibly benefit from the argument for bank mergers, that they need to be able to expand internationally? What does that do for the Canadian back on the farm, apart from expose our Canadian banking system to the ways of international banking. Subprime mortgage lending anyone? Enron off balance sheet lending anyone?

Has anyone in Ottawa ever heard of the concept of "if it ain't broke, don’t fix it?".

Soon Flaherty's work will all be done. Meanwhile Canada will have gone down the drain. Here's an idea. Why don't the banks dividend out their excess earnings to shareholders who can reinvest it in our own country in the manner they think best serves their needs? Oh yeah, they're only the owners and not the omnipotent managers.

No-merger rule ‘out of step,' bank group says
STEVEN CHASE
Globe and Mail Update
January 10, 2008 at 9:47 PM EST

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080110.wrmerger0110/BNStory/Bus iness/