Against Technology - 

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 The Boom, The Bust, and Neo-Luddites in the 1990s 19

Chapter 2 The Mythic History of the Original Luddites 45

Chapter 3 Romanticizing the Luddites 77

Chapter 4 Frankenstein and the Monster of Technology 105

Chapter 5 Novelizing the Luddites 137

Chapter 6 Counterculture and Countercomputer in the 1960s 173

Chapter 7 Ned Ludd in the Age of Terror 211

Notes 235

Selected Bibliography 257

Index 267

https://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/3397664/Jones-2006-Against-Technology.pdf

 Into the Mainstream and Oblivion”: Julian Mayfield's Black Radical Tradition, 1948-1984 

by David Tyroler Romine

Abstract

“Into the Mainstream and Oblivion” is a study of the intellectual and political biography

of the African American writer and political activist Julian Hudson Mayfield. As a member

of the black Left, Mayfield’s life of activism and art bring the complex network of artists,

activists, and political theorists who influenced the construction, tactics, and strategies of

social movements during the latter half of the twentieth century into sharper focus revealing

the ways in which black, modernist writing served as a critical site of political, social, and

cultural ferment during the Cold War. Using art to communicate ideas and arguments about

the relationship between race, gender, and political economy, Mayfield and his

contemporaries illuminate the broader influence of black writers on American culture and

politics. In addition, the state’s response to Mayfield’s life of literary activism sheds light on

the ways in which anti-communism worked to disrupt, marginalize, and dampen the effect

of challenges to white supremacy.

The project makes extensive use of archives at the Schomburg Center for Research

in Black Life in Harlem, which houses the archives of Julian Mayfield and many of his

contemporaries. In addition to these primary source documents, this project examines

government documents produced by the extensive surveillance of African American writers

by various government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department

of State, and United States Information Agency. Finally, the dissertation has benefitted from

a close working relationship with the family of Julian Mayfield and oral histories from

contemporaries which sheds light on the complex interplay of gender and class among black

social movements during the latter half of the twentieth century.

https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/17520/Romine_duke_0066D_14836.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

THE REVOLUTION WILL BE VIDEOTAPED:

MAKING A TECHNOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE LONG 1960s

Peter Sachs Collopy

A DISSERTATION

in

History and Sociology of Science

Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania

Abstract

In the late 1960s, video recorders became portable, leaving the television studio for the art gallery, the psychiatric hospital, and the streets. The technology of recording moving images on magnetic tape, previously of use only to broadcasters, became a tool for artistic expression, psychological experimentation, and political revolution. Video became portable not only materially but also culturally; it could be carried by an individual, but it could also be carried into institutions from the RAND Corporation to the Black Panther Party, from psychiatrists’ offices to art galleries, and from prisons to state-funded media access centers. Between 1967 and1973, American videographers across many of these institutional contexts participated in a common discourse, sharing not only practical knowledge about the uses and maintenance of video equipment, but visions of its social significance, psychological effects, and utopian future. For many, video was a technology which would bring about a new kind of awareness, the communal consiousness that—influenced by theevolutionary philosophy of Henri Bergson—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin referred to as the noosphere and Marshall McLuhan as the global village. Experimental videographers across several fields were also influenced by the psychedelic research of the 1950s and early 1960s, by the development of cybernetics as a science of both social systems and interactions between humans and machines, by anthropology and humanistic psychology, and by revolutionary political movements in the United States and around the world

https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3451&context=edissertations

I WAS PART OF THE VIDEO TAPE REVOLUTION WITH OUR YIPPIE GROUP IN EDMONTON WHO USED PORTABLE VIDEO CAMERA'S TO FILM MEDIA CONFRENCES ON THE FUTURE OF TV IN THE NEW ERA OF CABLE, DEMANDING FREE PUBLIC ACCESS TO CABLE FOR DIY PRODUCTIONS. WHAT CANADIANS GOT WAS A SHORT DUREE OF DIY ON CHANNEL 10 WHICH ONLY EXISTS AS A DEVOLED CABLE PR CHANNEL

PAUL MASON POSTCAPITALISM - A GUIDE TO OUR FUTURE PDF

http://pinguet.free.fr/mason2015.pdf

 

Nostalgia for Infinity: New Space Opera and Neoliberal Globalism

by Jerome Dale Winter

Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in English

University of California, Riverside, June 2015

 Dr. Sherryl Vint, Chairperson

This doctoral dissertation argues that contemporary postcolonial literature from

and about the Caribbean, Scotland, and India responds to American and British popular

genre fiction, specifically the subgenre known as New Space Opera, in allegorizing the

neoliberal processes, conditions, and experiences of globalization in the world-system.

My project discusses works by postcolonial authors who have yet to receive theoretical

investigation from this perspective, including Iain M. Banks, Karen Lord, and Nalo

Hopkinson, as well as important transatlantic SF authors whose work has yet to be

discussed in terms of globalism including Samuel R. Delany, M. John Harrison, Gwyneth

Jones, Bruce Sterling, and C.J. Cherryh. I argue that these often critically neglected

space-opera novels reconfigure for our times the conventional trappings of traditional

space opera — such as such as faster-than-light starships, galactic empires, doomsday

weapons, and dramatic encounters with exotic aliens — to reflect and refract the global

dimensions of our neoliberal and postcolonial world-system transfigured by

contemporary technoculture. Consequently, I argue that New Space Opera novels address

and intervene in sociopolitical and historical developments specific to the cultures in

which they are written. New Space Opera written from Scottish, Indian, and Caribbean

perspectives interrogates the interweaving of nation-states and transnational culture,

especially in connection with the rapidly accelerating technological, social, and economic

changes facing our planet today

https://escholarship.org/content/qt2n63z8dv/qt2n63z8dv_noSplash_c7c552d04b9e38b239ea82f5e15fa9b1.pdf

 

The Radical Subject: An Intellectual Biography of Raoul Vaneigem (1934 - Present)

Alastair Hemmens

306 Pages

1 File ▾

 

https://www.academia.edu/8096511/The_Radical_Subject_An_Intellectual_Biography_of_Raoul_Vaneigem_1934_Present

This thesis proposes an intellectual biography of Raoul Vaneigem (1934-Present). Vaneigem was a member of the Situationist International (SI) between 1961 and 1970. Today the SI is widely recognised as one of the significant avant-garde groups to have contributed to the historical events that shook France in May 1968. Most people will have come to Vaneigem through his Traité de savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations (1967), which he wrote as a member of the SI and was published just months before the largest wildcat strike in French history. Vaneigem is therefore of interest from a cultural history or history of ideas perspective because his work embodies both a political moment and because it emerged out of debates that are still informing contemporary theory. Moreover, Vaneigem is something of an anomaly in that he has always worked outside and against intellectual and political institutions, he comes from a working-class background and he has lived the great majority of his life in the province of Hainaut, the old industrial heartland of Belgium, where he was born. This makes Vaneigem an outsider in a world that has ostensibly been dominated by the Parisian intellectual elite. More often than not Vaneigem has been dismissed, even vilified, by academics interested in the Situationist International. This is all the more surprising given that his Situationist comrade Guy Debord (1931-1994) has become a cause célèbre among the intellectual left since his death, igniting a veritable publishing industry in France and the English-speaking world. The intention of this thesis is not an attempt to earn Vaneigem the dubious acclaim that has feted Guy Debord these past decades. Rather, it endeavours to contextualise, clarify and bring out the complexity of the life and work of Raoul Vaneigem, making him the focus of a critical commentary that will reassess his place in the field.

File:Vaneigem Raoul The Revolution of Everyday Life.pdf ...

https://monoskop.org › File:Vaneigem_Raoul_The_Rev...

Aug. 11, 2012 — File:Vaneigem Raoul The Revolution of Everyday Life.pdf. From Monoskop. Jump to navigation Jump to search. File; File history; File usage.

Articles by or about Raoul Vaneigem, a Belgian Marxist and one of the key theoreticians of the Situationist International.

https://libcom.org/tags/raoul-vaneigem

Key articles:

The Book Of Pleasures

Basic Banalities (Parts I & II) - Raoul Vaneigem

BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS KEN KNABB SITUATIONIST ARCHIVES

http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/revolution/situationists.htm

"Revolutionary Romanticism: Henri Lefebvre's Revolution-as-Festival", Third Text, 27:2, 2013, pp.208-220.

Gavin Grindon
13 Pages
1 File ▾
https://www.academia.edu/10706390/_Revolutionary_Romanticism_Henri_Lefebvres_Revolution_as_Festival_Third_Text_27_2_2013_pp_208_220

This article examines Henri Lefebvre's concept of revolution-as-festival, its textual sources and its relationship to contemporary notions developed by Georges Bataille and the Situationist International. It is a companion-piece to the examination of Bataille's revolution-as-festival in Third Text 104, vol 24, no 3, May 2010. The author argues that Lefebvre's revolution-as-festival embodies the multiple methodological ambiguities of his ‘open’ dialectical approach, and his attempt to transplant Surrealist and Dadaist concerns into a Marxian framework. It is, paradoxically, these ambiguities that allow his revolution-as-festival to become a useful concept: firstly as a discursive making-visible and valorization of the art and culture of social movements; and secondly as a term through which to critically re-imagine this art and culture's limits and possibilities. This potential is borne out, not least, in the influence of Lefebvre's essay ‘Revolutionary Romanticism’ on the founding debates of the Situationist International.

“Alchemist of the Revolution: The Affective Materialism of Georges Bataille.” Third Text 24:3, 2010. pp.305-17.

Gavin Grindon

13 Pages

1 File ▾

https://www.academia.edu/240077/_Alchemist_of_the_Revolution_The_Affective_Materialism_of_Georges_Bataille_Third_Text_24_3_2010_pp_305_17

This article examines Georges Bataille’s notion of revolution‐as‐festival and his attempt, in his writing of the 1930s, to place theories of affect within the framework of Marxist philosophy. Against the various negative characterisations of this project, it looks at Bataille’s ideas in this period in context, in order to understand their vivid contradictions as an attempt to assert a positive project of affect’s utility to the Left, within and against negative categories in early twentieth‐century cultural and critical thought.

"Surrealism, Dada and the Refusal of Work: Autonomy, Activism and Social Participation in the Radical Avant-Garde," The Oxford Art Journal, 34:1, 2011, pp.79-96.

Gavin Grindon

18 Pages

https://www.academia.edu/477883/_Surrealism_Dada_and_the_Refusal_of_Work_Autonomy_Activism_and_Social_Participation_in_the_Radical_Avant_Garde_The_Oxford_Art_Journal_34_1_2011_pp_79_96

This article aims to explore the notion of activist-art, identifying it as a distinct tendency in Modern art through a re-examination of historical and theoretical approaches to the radical avant-garde, drawing on autonomist Marxist and materialist post-structural perspectives. First, through a critique of Peter Bürger's Theory of the Avant-Garde, I attempt to place the use of the idea of ‘autonomy’ by the avant-garde in its critical historical context not only in the negative sense of separation, but in the positive sense of freedom from restraint. I argue that for the avant-garde this took the particular form of a thematic engagement with the refusal of work. Secondly, I examine one particular form of this refusal: the engagement with social movements amongst Dadaists in Berlin. I set out a theoretical frame of ‘affective composition', in order to place avant-garde artistic production in relation to the art of social movements, whose production operates outside the institutions of art. I argue that not only is the avant-garde at crucial points influenced by the art of social movements, but that the Dadaists in Berlin attempt to imagine new forms of ‘activist-art’ which synthesise avant-garde and social movement performance and object-art in disobedient performances and performative disobedient objects.

"Fantasies Of Participation: The Situationist Imaginary of New Forms of Labour in Art and Politics", The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, 49-50, 2015, pp.62-90

Gavin Grindon

29 Pages

1 File ▾ ▾

https://www.academia.edu/21042822/_Fantasies_Of_Participation_The_Situationist_Imaginary_of_New_Forms_of_Labour_in_Art_and_Politics_The_Nordic_Journal_of_Aesthetics_49_50_2015_pp_62_90?pls=RWLSxnqyad

The Situationist International (SI) have become a canonical reference point when discussing artists' participation in political action or activism. This article attempts to decentre the SI from this position, by tracing their theories and representations of political agency and labour. I argue that their notion of agency is deeply conflicted, epitomized by the dual invocations 'never work/all power to the workers' councils. I examine how the SI's representations of agency betray an attraction to and fascination with 1960s reactionary fantasies around brainwashing, conditioning, control and torture. Their practical descriptions of a constructed situation, which 'makes people live' are, in fact, closer to torturous state control than total liberation. The notions of agency they mobilise draw on colonial and classist sources, which actually deny the agency of radical movements. As a result, the SI produce a series of weak fantasies of participation, in which agency is denied and 'demanding the impossible' is actually a demand to constitute and police the impossible. Artistic-political agency was both guarded centre and constituent other. The SI's policing of their identity, tied in name to the agency of 'situations', involved the ongoing exclusion and repression of other artists' more practically-engaged labour within social movements.

BLM's Patrisse Cullors to step down from movement foundation

A co-founder of Black Lives Matter announced today that she is stepping down as executive director of the movement’s foundation.

Patrisse Cullors poses for a portrait to promote a film during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Source: Associated Press

She decried what she called a smear campaign from a far-right group, but said neither that nor recent criticism from other Black organisers influenced her departure.

Patrisse Cullors, who has been at the helm of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation for nearly six years, said she is leaving to focus on other projects, including the upcoming release of her second book and a multi-year TV development deal with Warner Bros.

Her last day with the foundation is tomorrow.

“I’ve created the infrastructure and the support, and the necessary bones and foundation, so that I can leave,” Cullors told The Associated Press. “It feels like the time is right.”

Cullors’ departure follows a massive surge in support and political influence in the U.S. and around the world for the BLM movement, which was established nearly eight years ago in response to injustice against Black Americans. The resignation also comes on the heels of controversy over the foundation’s finances and over Cullors’ personal wealth.

The 37-year-old activist said her resignation has been in the works for more than a year and has nothing to do with the personal attacks she has faced from far-right groups or any dissension within the movement.

“Those were right-wing attacks that tried to discredit my character, and I don’t operate off of what the right thinks about me,” Cullors said.

As she departs, the foundation is bringing aboard two new interim senior executives to help steer it in the immediate future: Monifa Bandele, a longtime BLM organiser and founder of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement in New York City, and Makani Themba, an early backer of the BLM movement and chief strategist at Higher Ground Change Strategies in Jackson, Mississippi.

“I think both of them come with not only a wealth of movement experience, but also a wealth of executive experience,” Cullors said.

The BLM foundation revealed to the AP in February that it took in just over $90 million last year, following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man whose last breaths under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer inspired protests globally. The foundation said it ended 2020 with a balance of more than $60 million, after spending nearly a quarter of its assets on operating expenses, grants to Black-led organisations and other charitable giving.

Critics of the foundation contend more of that money should have gone to the families of Black victims of police brutality who have been unable to access the resources needed to deal with their trauma and loss.

“That is the most tragic aspect,” said the Rev. T. Sheri Dickerson, president of an Oklahoma City BLM chapter and a representative of the #BLM10, a national group of organisers that has publicly criticised the foundation over funding and transparency.


“I know some of (the families) are feeling exploited, their pain exploited, and that's not something that I ever want to be affiliated with," Dickerson said.


Cullors and the foundation have said they do support families without making public announcements or disclosing dollar amounts.


In 2020, the BLM foundation spun off its network of chapters as a sister collective called BLM Grassroots, so that it could build out its capacity as a philanthropic organisation. Although many groups use “Black Lives Matter” or “BLM” in their names, less than a dozen are considered affiliates of the chapter network.


Last month, Cullors was targeted by several conservative-leaning publications that falsely alleged she took a large annual salary from the foundation, affording her recent purchase of a southern California home.


In April, the foundation stated Cullors was a volunteer executive director who, prior to 2019, had “received a total of $120,000 since the organisation's inception in 2013, for duties such as serving as spokesperson and engaging in political education work.”


“As a registered 501c3 non-profit organisation, (the foundation) cannot and did not commit any organisational resources toward the purchase of personal property by any employee or volunteer,” the foundation said in a statement. “Any insinuation or assertion to the contrary is categorically false.”


In 2018, Cullors released, “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir,” which became a New York Times bestseller. She has also consulted on a number of racial justice projects outside of BLM, taking compensation for that work in her personal capacity.


She and the BLM movement have come a long way since its inception as a social media hashtag, following the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watch volunteer who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida.


Cullors, along with BLM co-founders Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, pledged then to build a decentralised movement governed by consensus of a members’ collective. In 2015, a network of chapters was formed, while donations and support poured in. Garza and Tometi soon stepped away from day-to-day involvement in the network to focus on their own projects.


Cullors, who has arguably been the most publicly visible of the co-founders, became the foundation’s full-time executive director last year purely out of necessity, she said.


“We needed her,” said Melina Abdullah, who leads BLM Grassroots and co-founded, with Cullors, BLM’s first-ever official chapter in Los Angeles.


“George Floyd was killed and the whole world rose up,” Abdullah told the AP. “I would like her to be there forever, but I also know that that’s not feasible. The real test of any organisation is can it survive the departure of its founders. And I have no question that Black Lives Matter will survive and grow and evolve, even with the departure of our final co-founder in a formal role.”


On Oct. 5, St. Martin's Press will release Cullors’ latest book, titled “An Abolitionists Handbook,” which she says is her guide for activists on how to care for each other and resolve internal conflict while fighting to end systemic racism. Cullors is also developing and producing original cable and streaming TV content that centres on Black stories, under a multi-year deal with Warner Bros.


The first of her TV projects will debut in July, she said.


“I think I will probably be less visible, because I won’t be at the helm of one of the largest, most controversial organisations right now in the history of our movement,” Cullors said.


“I’m aware that I’m a leader, and I don’t shy away from that. But no movement is one leader.”

'Boggling' CRTC flip-flop on wholesale internet rates could mean higher prices for consumers: critics


© Provided by National Post

The CRTC decision caps off a two-year battle between large telecom companies and smaller internet service providers whose businesses rely on wholesale access to the networks of the big telecoms.

A decision by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission not to lower wholesale internet rates despite saying it would two years ago is a loss for Canadian consumers who will see their internet service prices go up, critics say.

On Thursday, the regulator said it would not implement the lower wholesale internet rates – the rates smaller internet service providers (ISPs) pay big telecoms for network access — after all.

Matt Stein, chair of the Competitive Network Operators of Canada, which represents smaller providers, said the decision came as a shock.

“It is boggling to think the CRTC chose to reverse the decision that they spent three years making,” he said.

Thursday’s reversal will lead “the rates that Canadians pay for internet to go up, in part because competitors in most cases have already forward priced in belief that there will be a substantial decline in rates,” Stein said. That will now have to change, and those increases will lead to rises in internet prices across the board, he predicted.

The decision caps off a two-year battle between large telecom companies and smaller internet service providers whose businesses rely on wholesale access to the networks of the big telecoms. It means the smaller, wholesale-based companies like TekSavvy and Distributel will have to keep paying essentially the same higher rates that preceded the 2019 decision to lower them.

National wireless providers must sell wholesale access to regional carriers for seven years, CRTC rules

Telcos threaten to pull rural internet investment after CRTC lowers wholesale rates

It’s a big win for large telecoms like Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Quebecor and Cogeco who fought the new rates through every avenue available to them, arguing lower rates would harm network investment, including in rural areas, where telecom infrastructure is often dated and inadequate. They filed court appeals, petitioned federal cabinet to overturn the decision and asked the CRTC itself to review the decision.

Last year, the Federal Court said the CRTC’s rates stand and though the big telecoms appealed at the Supreme Court, that court declined to hear the case. The Liberal government also declined to overturn or alter the decision.

That left the ball in the CRTC’s court, leaving it up to the regulator to decide whether to uphold the lower rates it established in August 2019. On Thursday, it said it would not, determining there was “substantial doubt as to the correctness” of the 2019 rates.

It said starting another process to review them would take too long, cause too much market uncertainty, and take too many resources away from establishing a new, “disaggregated” wholesale regime.

CRTC chairman Ian Scott said in an interview that the decision won’t lead prices to go up because the lower rates were never implemented, calling that a “false narrative.”

“Why would it go up?” he said. “I’m not buying this – not as a result of the establishment of these rates.” He added that the small telecoms that lowered their prices in anticipation knew the rates weren’t final, and that some of the companies have also raised them back up in the meantime.

“It is up to them to choose their pricing,” he said. “Presumably they all make contingency plans.”

That “disaggregated” regime the CRTC wants to move towards has been plagued by problems and seen no take-up from companies since it was introduced in 2015. Small ISPs said the regime had turned out to be “unworkable,” and the CRTC is currently in the process of reviewing it.

Scott said he couldn’t state when the disaggregated regime would be put in place, but indicated that the delay could be because smaller providers “prefer to have aggregated forever.”

Laura Tribe, executive director of advocacy group OpenMedia, said in an interview the decision’s focus on the disaggregated model is “really concerning,” given that the CTRC first started consulting on it in 2013, issued a decision in 2015 and “six years later we’ve yet to see a single wholesale connection over disaggregated wholesale rates.”

While Thursday’s decision is the final step in the appeal processes launched by the big telecoms in 2019, it doesn’t necessarily mean the fight over wholesale rates is over. Parties who are unhappy with the CRTC’s ruling have the option of filing another appeal in Federal Court, or turning to the federal government again.

How the Liberal government might respond is unclear, given that when cabinet declined to overturn the 2019 decision, then-innovation minister Navdeep Bains issued a statement sympathetic to the big telecoms’ arguments about investment that said the rates were too low.

But the Liberals also campaigned on internet service affordability in the 2019 election, Tribe pointed out. She said the decision “actively undermines” that.

A statement from current Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne said he “will be reviewing the decision and its implications to ensure they align with our policy priorities of affordability, competition and innovation in the sector.”

RIPPED OFF SERVICE CHARGES=PROFIT
How should we feel about soaring bank profits during a pandemic

© Carlos Osorio/Reuters

A man wearing a protective face mask last year in Toronto's financial district. 

Despite fears for the economy then, Canada's banks have roared back as if the pandemic never happened.

You can almost smell the simmering outrage against Canada's big banks in the comments at the bottom of a recent CBC Go Public story about rising bank fees.

But this week, as the banks revealed another round of stunning results, the news was a fresh reminder that despite the pandemic's disruption, the impact of COVID-19 did not lead to the economic catastrophe that so many feared at the time. Some say banks were partly responsible for that positive outcome.

And while the bank fee story was a magnet for online anger, comments beneath CBC's reports on bank profits were far more nuanced.

Love 'em and hate 'em

"You know, it's interesting. People seem to love and hate the banks at the same time," said Hilliard MacBeth, longtime Edmonton-based financial advisor and author of the gloomy book on Canadian real estate When the Bubble Bursts.

MacBeth has encountered many people dealing with Canada's financial institutions over his 42 years in the personal finance business. He says Canadians are surprisingly uncritical of banks so long as they get loans when they need them. He also thinks Canadians might be more critical if they were better informed.

"I don't think the public is very aware of this," he said. "They just hear 'you're approved for that loan' and they're happy."

Certainly some of the people loving the Canadian banks this week include those who invest in them. And whether you know it or not, odds are you too are an investor. Canada and Quebec's pension plans have big stakes in the banks. So do mutual funds, life insurance companies and other financial groups that promise future payouts based on the money you set aside today.

Bank shares have rebounded from pandemic lows

Strictly from an investor's point of view, Jim Shanahan, a financial equities analyst with Edward Jones, said the banks have demonstrated their merit, bouncing off last year's lows to attain new highs. As you can see by clicking on the graph above, it was as if the pandemic never happened. He said taxpayers should be grateful.

"Patient, long-term investors have been rewarded by holding the shares and they are mostly trading at or near all-time highs," Shanahan said.

He works out of the Edward Jones headquarters in St. Louis, Mo., where Canadian banks have a reputation for conservative risk management. That paid off in the 2008 financial crisis, when they did not need U.S.-style bailouts, and also during the crisis brought on by the pandemic.

Solid backstop

"I think that Canadian taxpayers and businesses and other stakeholders should be pleased with the performance of the banks, which provided a very solid backstop during a very weak Canadian economy and performed exceptionally well," he said in a phone interview.

Despite wall-to-wall advertising pointing out how much they love you, banks are not your mom. Like every other profit-making company, they are in it for the bottom line. That does not mean they ignore criticism on fees or other things we complain about if we complain loud enough. And certainly, as people who spoke to Go Public pointed out, raising fees at the same time as making astonishing profits does not look especially good to their valued customers.

Readers' frequent suggestions that disgruntled customers switch to credit unions or to one of the (big-bank owned) low-fee alternatives illustrate how people determined to stick it to the big banks have options. The fact that we keep using them seems to back up MacBeth's position that Canadians remain tolerant of the banks' behaviour.

"The only way that Canadians would lose their love affair with the banks right now is if the banks started to foreclose on homes and also to put people in bankruptcy over their credit cards and their HELOCS and all that stuff," MacBeth said. "That doesn't seem to be happening."


© Don Pittis/CBC

One of the reasons for increased bank profits is the government support for real estate lending, which may not be good for the economy in the long run.

Some people complain about excessive government payouts during the pandemic, fearing they will bring tax increases. But MacBeth believes without that support, Canada was really close to that kind of meltdown.

"It was on the verge of happening a year ago, and then the government of Canada came in with massive transfers of income and dollars to the households which essentially, if you think about it, is a transfer to the banks," he said.

As the banks reported this week, their loan losses were negligible as Canadians paid off non-mortgage debt.

Taxpayers get some credit

As many banking experts will point out, Canadian banks are successful not just because they are so cautious and so wise. It's also because taxpayers have their backs and because government regulators keep them in line.

As Shanahan observed, Canadian banks had much higher reserve requirements than their U.S. equivalents to help them, and borrowers, survive the downturn. He said that as those requirements lift, expect increased dividends and share buybacks. Executive bonuses will be back on the table.

But as with so much at the heart of the Canadian economy these days, the banks have been riding a wave of rising house prices as Canadians borrow and spend on real estate, even as they pay off other loans. Many Canadian don't think much beyond the bank that lent them the money to buy, but once again, the taxpayer is there for the banks with what are effectively mortgage subsidies.

"In Canada, the CMHC is the primary risk taker and the bank just gets to keep all the profits," MacBeth said. "They're taking loans away from something that might be productive and giving more loans to households who are buying real estate they can't really afford."

And as many, including our central bankers, have said in the past, if that trend continues, diverting so much of our wealth to inflating the price of unproductive real estate may not be the best thing for Canada, or for its banks, once the pandemic is over. By comparison the effects of rising fees, while evidently annoying, are of small economic consequence.

Follow Don Pittis on Twitter @don_pittis