This week, the Royal Bank had to pay back some of its customers $21.8 million worth of overcharged investment fees.

Gosh, they鈥檙e sorry about that!

鈥淲e sincerely regret these errors,鈥� said a statement released by the bank. (Imagine an ATM reading it in badly synthesized human speech for the full effect.) 鈥淲hen we became aware of them, we quickly notified the OSC [Ontario Securities Commission] and took immediate steps to ensure clients would be reimbursed.鈥�

Which is bank speech for 鈥淲hoops! We got caught!鈥�

Their apology/denial of wrongdoing would be slightly more convincing if this wasn鈥檛 literally the ninth Canadian bank to be caught doing the exact same thing.

Every single big bank in Canada has overcharged customers. TD started the ball rolling in 2014, and they had to admit that the overcharging had been going on for up to a decade.

I doubt you鈥檙e surprised. I tend to greet news of new corporate malfeasance with a deep sigh rather than furious anger. If I got red-faced with rage every time a major corporation picked its customers pockets, I鈥檇 be dead of a heart attack.

Major corporations have a distinct lack of ethics. If they鈥檙e not directly overcharging, they鈥檙e busy finding the country with the fewest labour laws for their new factory, or giving their senior executives bonuses while telling the rank and file that they鈥檒l have to go without a raise again this year, darn it!

When you combine greed (which is the basis of our entire economic system, and arguably our society as a whole) with power you get toxic behaviour.

People who like power and money don鈥檛 tend to stop when they have 鈥渆nough.鈥� They don鈥檛 know what 鈥渆nough鈥� is.

So people who have private islands commit insider trading fraud. CEOs with Vermeers and Van Goghs on their walls order toxic waste dumped off the coast of Somalia.

Or the people at the top wash their hands of the mess and pretend it wasn鈥檛 their idea at all.

No, they just set sales targets and goals for their lower-level employees that are impossible to meet.

Impossible if you don鈥檛 fleece someone, that is. And thus do those on the bottom of the pyramid become accomplices in making more money for the people at the top.

And those at the top? They鈥檒l sleep just fine, cradled by silk sheets.