SSL certificates, why do they bother?

After reading this article from The Register, why bother with SSL?  A banking heist of the century is waiting to happen, me thinks.  And that innocuous padlock on your browser is going to be the reason for the vanishing money.   You can think of even more ingenious ways of using it to snooker anyone...

Certificate Authority Trustwave has revoked a digital certificate that allowed one of its clients to issue valid certificates for any server, thereby allowing one of its customers to intercept their employees' private email communication.
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And it's all downhill from there.