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Editorial: A lesson learned
Commentary by Jeff Burgar
for South Peace News
Maybe I’ve mellowed in my old age. Today, banks don’t seem to be the same blood-thirsty tightwads I remember from my youth.
Gosh, but prying a loan from one of those baskerds was like getting the Oilers to win three games in a row. Not impossible, but when was the last time it happened?
Thank goodness for Crown outfits like the Alberta Opportunity Company (now AFSCA). AOC, other provincial bodies across the west and credit unions helped many a small businesses while chartered insisted on loaning their money out mainly in Ontario.
These days, I’m happy banks don’t tell me how careful they have to be since they are lending grandma’s life savings. That corn stopped when the news leaked banks were at the same time lending to a swack of South American banana states on the verge of bankruptcy. Poor grandma!
These days, the landscape has changed.
I’ve found banks over the years to act more as partners in business, instead of just as lenders.
Your success is their success, and that keeps the world going around.
As it happens, Canadian banks today pat themselves on the back for being recognized as among the world’s most stable, and among the world’s best.
Different regulations. That age old reluctance to lend in iffy situations, but now internationally instead of “anywhere not in Central Canada." All good reasons. And another that needs to be said.
A few years ago, Canadian banks lined up, shouting to government about the need to merge and get bigger. Canada really only needs perhaps two or three major banks, they argued. That’s plenty of competition. We have to get bigger, they said. That’s the only way we can compete with the big international and big American banks, they cried.
As dumb as our elected people can be some days, this time around politicians didn’t listen to the money.
They know how Canadians feel about banks. The idea was buried.
Today, we all know what happened to “big.’’
As in, “too big to be allowed to fail.’’
Around the world, possibly only Canadian taxpayers are alone in not having to bail out their big banks.
Hoary old sayings like, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket,’’ and “don’t have just one iron in the fire’’ apply just as well to banks. We need more than one or two.
Thus, when one screws up, well, that’s just business isn’t it? Gosh knows enough Canadian businesses were left to sink over the years.
Why not a bank?
Lastly, Grandma’s money is insured by you, me and the federal government for pete’s sake anyway.
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