Rev Keith Russell On Banker’s Greed

CIBC (Caribbean Bank) is going to raise my personal banking fees by 40%, beginning September 1, 2024. And Freeport Power Company wants a rate increase; these actions amount to nothing more than corporate greed run amok. It is insensitive and shameless, a vicious and calculated assault on the working class and poor. And on small and medium size businesses. They want to increase bonuses and dividends to CEOs and shareholders; the working class and the poor be damned.

I’m channeling Marvin Gaye right now. They make me want to holler; throw up both my hands. A 40% increase? What the #@$%&* is this nonsense. Who is regulating these clowns in this clown show? Where the hell is the Central Bank? These corporate elites are trying to keep their knees on our necks.

Listen, when is the last time any of us got a 40% increase in our salaries at one time? Has it ever happened? So the boss calls us into his office and says you have been doing a great job so I’m going to give you a 40% raise; I’m taking your $2000 per month salary to $2800 per month. On which planet? Maybe Mars, but not on this third rock from the sun.

Imagine a union leader walking into a negotiation room with managers of a company to discuss a new contract for employees, and his opening line is I want a 40% increase for workers. They would think that the union leader is on crack.

But CIBC could just decide in this economic environment to increase my fees by 40%; not 5% or 7% or even the egregious burden of 10%, but this unconscionable, inexplicable, unimaginable 40%. Who are these people who sit around a table and decide to do such a thing to the working class and the poor? Are we going to just sit around and allow them to rape us like this, in broad day light.

Listen, there is not a single bank in this nation whose service is so far beyond expectations to legitimately deserve, by any stretch of the imagination, a 40% increase. Let’s move our money from CIBC. Let’s agree on a date and, like Niki, just do it. And let’s do it to any bank that tries this nonsense.

And as for the unthinkable, devilish desire of Freeport Power to seek an increase and for the Grand Bahama Port Authority to have the brazen audacity to believe it has the authority to grant it, we the people have something for both a yinner. It’s called the people’s power.

And as for the vacillating Hon. Mr. Pintard, pick a side. Decide whether you are fish or foul. Because at the end of the day, if you stand with corporate greed and become complicit in the oppression of the working class and the poor and small and medium size business come 2026 we will cut you deeply (metaphorically) because without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.

I write; you decide