Our last round of bank mergers ripped the heart out of country towns and transferred countless thousands on the unemployment scrapheap. Generations of farmers were wiped out as faceless (and heartless) bankers in remote city skyscrapers gave the command to wind them up. The scars of this recent era still run deep in the psyche of the bush.
Friendly faces in suburban banks were replaced by foreign tongues in Delhi. Computer generated voices now tell us which button to push to navigate our way to a ‘customer relations officer’ and remind us that we were being recorded ‘for training purposes’. Expletives are now the order of the day for frustrated customers.
The proposed merger between Westpac (one of the impersonal ‘big 4) and St George will see the ‘personal touch’ inherent in the St George brand disappear – the dragon will be replaced by a dinosaur!
Customers will be further alienated as they become even more exposed to bank fee increases that will inevitably be imposed on them. Economic jargon will be used to justify this unconscionable extortion.
One does not have to look far to see the adverse impact of human greed dressed up in the disguise of ‘efficiency’ in other sectors of our economy. Motorists are hostage to oil company giants who brazenly adjust the daily supply and price of fuel to maximise their profits. Service stations might have different company names but to vulnerable motorist they are regarded as a cartel and any hint of real competition is a façade.
Mega shopping centres produce mega profits for shareholders at the expense of small business victims who have no choice but to comply with their outrageous demands for compliance.
The mega cartels in the grocery industry, Coles and Woolworths, use brute corporate force to drive small competitors out of business through predatory pricing and to dictate how much they will pay struggling farmers for their produce. They control every link in the food chain. And what benefits do we see from them in Camden? Their two supermarkets are the grottiest in town!
While it says a lot for their sense of community pride – or lack of it – it is also an indicator of the what happens when corporations become so bloated that communities are regarded as commodities for tycoons in remote boardrooms.
Tags: Economics, Finance, My Opinion
