the banks are made of data

with a firewall at every door

    Almost everybody banks and uses credit cards.  We accumulate points, and use those points to buy services and goods.  We keep money in our accounts, which our banks and credit unions reinvest “robustly” (to use a word you often see in financial reports), although they certainly don’t pay robust interest to us in return. 

    These financial institutions employ a lot of Canadians, pay for a lot of local real estate, and make or break a lot of local, national and international businesses.

    It’s pretty easy to find a Canadian-owned bank with a branch in your neighbourhood, but not so easy to determine which one of the handful of major banks does the best job by your ethical standards.  That would be a good area of investigation for an early Royal Dudley. 

    Ditto for credit cards.  When it comes to cashing in our credit-card points, we haven’t seen many promotions for ethical products.  We could change that.  Finding a financial institution that would help sponsor a robust discussion of this would sure be a great first step!

and the vaults are filled with digits

that we workers keystroked for 

    Collectively, Canadian adults have accumulated trillions of dollars of investments in retirement savings, government and employee pension funds, RRSPs, TFSAs and the like.  These assets are reinvested for us, and how that money is put to work is a major force behind the wellbeing of Canada — meaning, ultimately, you and me.  Yet most of us profess ignorance or boredom with the details of investing,

   Some of this money buys the bonds that finance government debt for infrastructure and hydro and such.  A lot of it goes to stocks in major companies.  Some of them, especially oil and Canadian mining companies, have a big eco-impact globally.  Others have dealings in some questionable countries.  

    As for personal portfolios, there are ethical-investment advisors to help us out. But many of their promotions are filled with platitudes (“Making money while making a difference”) or accompanied by reports of funds that contain holdings where names like EXXON and Nestlé pop up regularly.  So it’s hard for the layman to make sense of them.  And who has the time for DIY day trading?  

    Financial advice — where to invest? — and tracking investments — what is your money up to? — are robust subjects for us.  We’ll get contributors that can give us some good answers.  Robust Dudleys.  Dollar Dudleys about data dollars.