Banks dodging their social responsibilityUvongo Online - Traditionally banks play a key role in a market economy and providing a crucial service to the local community and for this reason alone we need socially responsible banks.
We know of bad debts and the importance of balance sheets but we want banks to approach these difficulties in a socially responsible way. Many of them do not.
The banks, together with the Government, play a very important role to create stability in a country but they often forget that, when the financial bubble burst, it is people's livelihoods that are at stake.
Their financial behaviour is not socially responsible and they need to put together a co-ordinated strategy for growth to defeat unemployment and financial instability.
It is simply just not good enough to fake their social responsibility by donating huge amounts to a few selected projects in the public and think that they did their share with that.
There has never been a fair balance of power between the banks and their customers and banks almost always build their policies around the wealthier class, robbing the vulnerable members of the community, the low paid and unemployed, of mainstream banking activities and support.
Nobody will disagree that banks are money generating machines and a commercial business but they do have a social responsibility that stretch far wider than donating money in the public to gain publicity.
Today's banks are just too hard, machine like driven and without empathy for their lower income customers without any care at all about their livelihoods or potential.
Give us our money now or we take anything you have is simply not a socially responsible act, is it?
To increase their financial risk too much is definitively not a very good idea but, while almost all of them claims to be helpful and supportive, their real policies simply don't left any room for individualism, potential and social responsibility either.
Posted by:
Frank Coetzee
Uvongo Online
SA Internet News Group cc
http://www.talking-point.co.za
(You can also post unlimited articles to promote your business in a subtle way)
28.07.2007. 19:48
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