Interest Rates rise again, but where's the old Bank of Canada rate matching????
The big banks are raisiing mortgage rates again. What I want to know: why is no one talking about the big banks NOT matching the Bank of Canada key lending rate??? Like they used to, before the 2008 recession?
Remember when the Bank of Canada dropped its rate to 0.25% and the big banks REFUSED to follow, and kept their rates at 2.25%?
I knew they would never go back to the old ways, they got away with it. Since the Bank of Canada has raised its key lending rate since last year, now sitting at 1%, the big banks have also raised their rates. They're 3%, and apparently set to rise again, without the Bank of Canada raising its key rate.
criminal.
And even in an election, no one is talking about it.
No wonder the banks are making such HUGE profits. They can borrow at 1% and lend at 3.35%
I like what Citibank chief economist Willem Buiter said about. There is no real need for banks to be private, profit-seeking entities. They could be publicly owned utilities. Governments would suddenly have all kinds of money to spend on green energy initiatives at this time of environmental crisis. And the feds would suddenly have the money to spend on necessary infrastructure and social needs. Canada could have a national housing strategy again. They could put slumlords and cost-ineffective homeless shelters out of business if they really wanted to. They lack the political will and adhering more to a cult of impotence type of strategy. Federal governments have feigned powerlessness for decades. They intervene on behalf of certain interest groups, but ordinary Canadians are not among them.
Amazing that this is flying under the radar.
Rising mortgage rates are an indication of yield in bond markets. Bank 'prime' for other lending is only a guide. Just because banks refused to cut their prime in lockstep with the BOC does not mean that low-risk clients cannot access funds for less than prime.
On the flip side of the coin, the huge profits that Canadian banks make are also used to generate healthy dividends for shareholders that include pension plans and many individual rrsps.
Business is business. Don't blame the banks, look to the real culprit: the federal government. PM Harper just doesn't get it. In an election focused on families, he offers to double the TFSA amount to $10,000/year when most families can't save anything at all.
mortgage prime rates have ALWAYS matched the BOC key lending rate, for decades, as long as I can remember.
Until the recession of 2008.
what's changed in 3 years? Nothing except greedy banks saw an opportunity to get away with not matching the BOC rate.
The BOC steers the economy with its policy. If it loses its ability to set lending rates, we as canadians lose some control over inflation, etc
And the fact that no party is even talking about it in an election, is creepy
The Canadian Foundation for Rectal Examinations reminds Canadians that rectal exams are more comfortable than banking
Yes, I blame our corrupt stooges for allowing chartered banks and credit card companies to gouge Canadians. We didn't elect any central banker or private bank CEOs, or those few people our political stooges in the halls of powerlessness are ever held accountable to.