These are a few things I view as chutzpah in the financial world of today:
- Bank Fees: An institution that used to simply make money by loaning your money to other folks and doing business in the greedy area between loan rates and savings rates, now charges over $10 a month for the privilege to put your money in their bank. You have heard my rants about Free Banking before, but the banking racket has a corner on chutzpah, that is for sure.
- To say gas prices in Canada are set in Canada by the free market? To tell us that gas sitting in holding tanks at the local gas station has gone up in price, due to International Shortages, is Chutzpah.
- Financial Bail Outs in the U.S.: To have created the entire credit crisis via your own foolish (if not illegal) practices, and then going hat in hand to the government asking for Trillions of dollars to bail you out is chutzpah. You lose consumers money, through flawed methodologies, and then ask for more money from that consumer (through their taxes) to not lose more money? Staggering. (Remember 2008?)
Anybody else wishing to chime in with their own private financial chutzpah examples, please feel free to comment!
Chutzpah?
For those of you who still don’t get the concept of chutzpah the best explanation I can find is from Leo Rostein (author of the Joys of Yiddish ), who stated:
“…that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.”
Leo Rostein (The Joys of Yiddish)
Now that is chutzpah!
TD Financial statements.
Non-interest revenue (inc service fees): $6.5B
Non-interest expenses: $12.2B
The $1.5B in service fees barely covers 1/4 of their labour expense.
Without the service fees their net income would have been cut in HALF. Can you say dividend cut?
And seriously, who pays $25/month? I haven’t paid a penny in monthly fees in years.