You might think you are in a dream......but a banking executive in Australia has labelled his brethren as 'arrogant' and 'lacking empathy'. One has to acknowledge his honesty....except its long overdue. Where has this guy been for the last 15-odd years? Better late than never? But does a banking executive suddenly find a moral conscience? The banks have extorted huge wealth from consumers over this period. The value of the illegitimate fees collected must add up to $20 billion. The executive wants the banks to reform before the government imposes reforms on them. I'm sorry, but for someone so 'reform minded', he seems really quite pragmatic. He is arguing that the banks ought to change before the government forces them to change. Ok, there goes the 'empathy theory', so what about the arrogance? Well, that was never in question.
But its worse that that. The banking industry is guilty of extortion in a way that only oligopolies with the complicity of governments can achieve. The question is why no competitors have emerged. To this day, given the reputation of the banks, I never understood why others never entered the industry. For example, why didn't Woolworths set up a bank? Why not Macquarie Bank or HSBC? What about all those foreign banks who entered the commercial market in the 1980s. Surely they could invite the same anti-monopoly- breaking legislation to break up the bank cartel as the iron ore companies were able to do in WA railways. What about Virgin? They offered a credit card. Why not a bank?
It is characteristic of our democracy that it has taken 15 years to achieve utterly nothing in banking industry reform.
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Author
Andrew Sheldon
