Two important records were reached this past year; different sides of the same coin. On the face of the Loon, there’s household debt, which stands at a collective $1.7 trillion, mortgages excluded. On the face of the Queen, there’s Canada’s big banks, and their record-breaking bank profits. RBC clocked in at $11.5 billion in 2017 alone. Alone.

$11.5 billion in profit doesn’t happen by magic. It’s a potent mix of user fees, downsizing, low union density in the industry and pro-bank fiscal policies that allow them to dodge paying the kinds of taxes that you and I pay. In short, it’s greed expressed through public policy.

User fees have been steadily rising in Canada. A 2014 report from the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada found that between 2005 and 2013, steady transactions covered by a banking agreement have risen at about the rate of inflation. But variable fees, those that fall outside of your bank account agreement, have sharply increased. Any transaction that fell outside of what your banking plan covered, like, using an ATM, probably rose by 46 per cent.

At the same time, banks are laying people off and closing down branches. In 2017, RBC managed to both make record-breaking profits and announce that it would lay off 450 workers, mostly located in Toronto.

There are many interesting options that could stop these profits from accumulating. And, there are many elements you could choose to examine in an article about bank profits. From a national public postal bank to nationalizing the big five banks, from encouraging the use of credit unions to promoting no-fee bank accounts, from reporting on how little tax these corporations make to drawing a straight line between their profits and our generalized suffering, the frame one might employ in analyzing this news depends on your goal.

As someone who abhors greed and human suffering, I choose the frame that questions the economic policy that has enabled the bank profit/personal debt coin to exist.

Peter Armstrong at the CBC has a different approach.

In a profound example of comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted, his Dec. 4 analysis about how bank profits are actually good for average humans is yet another example of CBC commentary that is powerfully bad.

Let’s start with his conclusion:

[reads: So, next time you’re staring at the ATM or your bank statement in horror at the fees, remember: you’re getting a piece of that back.]

Aside from not being true, which I’ll get to, it’s a giant slap in the face of anyone reading this piece and who is mad about grotesque greed. There’s a reason why people are mad at income inequality, or at the news of profit hording in the Panama and Paradise papers. How much of this money that apparently benefits us is being stashed away? How much do we lose in opportunity cost because the banks pay such a low marginal tax increase? Why does this article conclude with a line that assumes we’re too stupid to understand how these forces are all linked, while ignoring the factors I’ve just mentioned? The only silver lining is that most people wont reach the end of the article.

Armstrong’s lede introduces RBC’s $11.5 billion in profit and concludes:

[Reads: it’s a staggering sum of money]

The article was written in anticipation of the rest of the big banks reporting their profits today and acknowledges that, yes, this amount of money might make you mad. Last year, the big five made $36B, so for argument’s sake, let’s imagine that the 2017 numbers will be closer to $40B. That’s indeed staggering.

[Reads: So huge it’s hard to get your head around

Not quite, Pete. In fact, it’s the job of someone offering analysis to help us get our head around this sum. But, he doesn’t help us. My colleague Virginia Ridley came up with some examples of what this money could pay for: