The Big Bad Bankers
Sometimes mortgage borrowers – business, farm and home buyers, must feel a bit like the Three Little Pigs under siege by the Big Bad Wolf.
The Big Bad Bankers huffed and puffed in Australia from the 1970’s and eventually blew borrower regulatory protections right away. Those controls had been legislated by previous governments specifically to protect the Australian people from ruthless exploitation by big banks.
Once Upon a Time
There was a time when borrowers could go to a free enterprise bank, safe and secure in the knowledge that their duly elected parliament would protect them from any dishonest behaviour within the major banks. Those Aussies also had a range of government owned banks to bank with, whose major role was to serve their customers honestly and fairly. They provided honest competition and so the free-enterprise banks were honest too.
The ruthless profiteers in the free-enterprise banks became hungry. They soon set about, like the Big Bad Wolf, working out how to blow this protective wall away so they could devour more of the hard-earned assets of the Australian people, as those people borrowed to finance businesses, farms and homes. The bankers have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. One look at their profits, will show you that. Business and farm borrowers contact GBAC from all over Australia for help with banking disputes.
Protection for bank customers blown away
Once bank de-regulation had given the major Australian banks more power to exploit those in need of loans, the job of dealing with the fall out was shared between two government bodies, ASIC and APRA. One might be excused for believing, from the report of the Banking Royal Commission, that these two bodies really worked more to protect the banking industry than to protect the Australian people. Whilst they regulated the banks to see that they were less likely to collapse and deprive shareholders of money invested in bank shares and also so that they did not damage the Australian economy or government, little attention at all was or is given to the dishonest practices which the banks used to transfer more and more of their customers’ assets to themselves by way of interest and charges.
Rate Rises
It seems amazing that given their multi-billion-dollar profits and multi-million dollar executive pay packets that as they discuss reasons for increasing their interest rates on poorer Australians, the Big Banks would not sacrifice some of their billions in profits to help their customers. Why would they when they have shareholders wanting maximum returns? Well it would seem the fair and decent thing to do. That’s all! Plenty of Aussies make sacrifices for others.
Moving to stronger protection
But the Three Little Pigs did not succumb to the Big Bad Wolf like Australian borrowers have to our Big Banks. They shifted to better protection, which one of them had been smart enough to have built.
The only protection that can save the struggling borrowers of Australia, is to do what the Three Little Pigs did, – move to better protection in a stronger situation. Like the Clever Little Pig who built the wolf-proof house, we voters could persuade our politicians to build us some government owned banks again, to protect us from these mega-powerful and ruthless Big Banks.
Government and banks for the people.
Why not? Our Parliaments do work for us when we approach them properly. The Votergram service and Voterlobby I started over 37 years ago has proved that. Our GBAC Banking Consultancy began a year later and has been one of those to help these democracy services to operate so successfully. Those who do not get government doing what they want, usually fail for one of three reasons.
1 Their request is not fair to others.
2 They have asked the wrong people in the wrong way.
3 They have not persisted until they won.
To that end all Australians are invited to join the Bankwatch Crusade by joining Voters Network (voters.au) free. In the “Who told you about us” box, enter “Bankwatch”.
Then we will offer our Members of Parliament a great way to be remembered for giving us honest banking again. They might well glance at the Bendigo and Adelaide Bank – Community Bank and Rural Bank examples, with which government might even partner.