Bad Citizen HSBC

It isn't that I just discovered the news.
It's just that this news has angered me since I heard it nearly three months ago.

Small business owners were "good enough" when the lender was known as the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank of Canada, when the interest on small business credit lines would help propel them to their current ranking as the second largest bank in the World. 

I can consider myself lucky, I suppose.
A couple of years ago, I moved all my banking to a local credit union.

Why?
Just a simple thing really.
The lock on the door that accesses the ATM vestibule was frequently broken.
In the habit of making night deposits, I often felt uneasy as "undesirables" stumbled past the building.

After complaining once, I complained again.
I was told that "during winter, some people force the door open, breaking the lock, to sleep in the warm vestibule, and we got tired of fixing the lock, so we just leave it unlocked now."

Huh?
Strange strategy for keeping their customers safe.

So I was one small business owner who did not receive the letter that other small business owners received in the mail around Christmas.
That HSBC was cancelling their small business account because, as the HSBC letter stated: "“The profitability of (that) small business is not high enough for the bank to consider maintaining the service..."

Huh?

The bank said it was changing its strategy.

Affected business owners were given 60 days to find a new bank.

Not just here, either.
It's worldwide, as this story from the United Arab Emirates proves.

But at least, there was a 60-day grace to find a new bank, versus what happened to this guy in the USA when he tried to use the debit card for his business.  It didn't work.  When he called the bank, he was told his business account was closed.  Just like that.  No letter, nothing.  Brett King is a blogger on the financial system...wrong guy to piss off by closing his account.  This is a blow-by-blow description of what occurred.

Because HSBC is so big, they believe they're untouchable with $2.7 Trillion in assets.
Bigger than our government?
Bigger than other governments?

HSBC is a second tier bank in Canada (not one of The Top Five), and is on the bottom rung when it comes to dignity and respect.

Their jettisoning of small business accounts is disgusting and repulsive.
We Canadians should not put up with being treated that way.

But even in the United States, where the government is being blamed for not pursuing charges against HSBC for...are you sitting down?...refusing to prosecute ... for laundering hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of alleged terrorists in the Middle East and drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia, the Department of Justice is sending the message that Big Banks are above the law. 
But HSBC got a $1.9 Billion dollar fine...(nobody at HSBC goes to jail, and new shareholders will pay the fine as it's simply another entry on their balance sheet).

And there are investors who are mad at HSBC. 

So will our government show HSBC that their new "strategy" isn't the way to treat the small business category in Canada?
There's no indication that anything will happen, unfortunately.

"The Canadian government should pull their Charter," offers Kia.

That'd teach HSBC the Canadian government doesn;t like the way small business owners have been treated.

“Who controls the food supply controls the people;
who controls the energy can control whole continents;
who controls money can control the world.”

Dr.Henry Kissinger 

For more reading on banks, here are stories you won't see in a newspaper...any mainstream media for that matter.  Pity.

ADDED March 1/14:    Timely video entitled  Bugger The Bankers here.