Companies with shareholders are ultimately responsible to their shareholders, and thus profits must be "adequate" or the shareholders will sell up and try elsewhere.
Whilst bank depositors receive such minimal returns during this extended period of bank recovery (and then taxed on their returns), shareholders expect much greater returns and are therefore very fickle on whether they stay with a company or leave it like rats off a sinking ship.
So companies of every ilk are desperate to keep their investors happy, and that means increasing profits and dividends, fuelling inflation which devalues their investors' profits, so greater and greater demands are placed on companies to increase income further.
And it's us at the bottom of the pile who pay the price!
