Bank Heist: How Our Financial Giants Are Costing You Money

There are no effective curbs on the amount of money a bank can manufacture via a few keystrokes of the computer. Banks have turned service charges into a major profit center with wonderful fees that ding you every time you use your account - and every time you don't (didn't that used to be called saving?).

And there's more, much more, that award-winning veteran journalist Walter Stewart has unearthed about the Canadian banking system, which is undergoing an extensive review during the next two years. The powerful big banks have mounted a steady, systematic effort to take over the trust, brokerage and insurance industries in Canada, have worked at bankrupting small business owners by refusing or calling in loans, and are quickly becoming accountable to nobody.

In an expose that is as timely as it is provocative, Bank Heist cracks open the safe and we thought secure world of the Canadian banking industry, to reveal that the vault is piled high with fat profits that came out of our pockets.