Australian Banks, after being propped up by the Australian tax payer during the GFC (and probably will be looking for our support again if, as many economists believe, round two hits the global economy in the near future), are now back to their old tricks. They use every trick in the financial book to grab more money from the people who can least afford it, simply because we can't do anything about it. Mr. (Toothless) Swan tells us to shop around and shift banks, but they are all dealing from the same deck. It's the shareholders that count, stuff the customers. Increasingly, the best way to make money from a bank, is to buy their shares, but not everyone can afford to do this.
That other toothless institution, the ACCC, says that they can't find evidence of collusion, but the banks don't need to collude, they pay agencies to do it for them. Data is collected on a weekly, and sometimes daily, basis and fed to them instantly via the Internet, on all of their competitors charges and fees. (Coles and Woolworths do this as well with grocery and petrol pricing) They don't object to this information merry-go-round, in fact they encourage it. Now they don't have to bother picking up the phone to their mates across town.
They are currently running a subtle campaign to grease our wheels before the next interest rate cut by the reserve bank, because they intend to pass very little, if any, of it on to their customers.
Their excuse is that their cost of borrowing from overseas is too high because of the GFC.
Let's just look at the facts, firstly they borrow less than one third of their money for lending from overseas, the rest they get from us. (That is if you have enough to save. Have your savings interest rates gone up recently?) and secondly, they have been recording massive, increased profits each quarter as if there isn't and has never been a financial crisis. How does that work? The institutions that caused the crisis are actually making money from it. Wow! What a business.
It makes me sick to my stomach when I see their ads on TV, insulting my intelligence by telling me what kind, caring people they are and how much they care for their customers. What bullshit. They close branches, charge increased fees on everything they can get away with, Throw people out of their homes and businesses as soon as something goes wrong, subtly force everyone into Internet banking (I like Internet banking, but it certainly has saved them a packet), charge exorbitant fees for late payments and overdrawing (Until recently, thanks to a class action which is currently running.) and in the next few months they will be cutting thousands of jobs so that they can maintain their huge profits, and pay their senior executives millions in salaries and bonuses. Meanwhile, when we want to talk to someone on the phone, they will be sitting in a 1 meter square booth in India somewhere with an Indian-English dictionary beside them and access to all of our financial records.
The sorriest thing that ever happened to Australian banking was the privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank. Just imagine if it was still owned by the tax payer; I'm old enough to remember the good old days of no fees, free money boxes, personal service, talking directly to the Bank Manager. If we still owned it and weren't worried about making huge profits for shareholders and bank executives, the Government would certainly have a big stick to keep the other greedy bastards in check. Housing and business finance might be more affordable and understanding, you could leave your savings in the bank and instead of disappearing they would increase, even if you forgot about the account for a while.
It's all very well having a strong banking sector, but I see them as parasites snaking their suckers into every nook and cranny of our lives until we can't do without them, you know, interest free TV's, furniture, white goods, car finance "don't worry about your credit rating". All of these lenders are backed by the banks down the line. Then they strangle us when there is nothing left. We protect them, because if we didn't they would take us all down with them. But while we do that, the most vulnerable, the ones in need of most assistance, are kicked to the curb. Should the banks be allowed to control people's lives and make massive profits as they do it? I think not, I believe our Government needs to have more control, and if competition is the best form of control, let us compete. Bring back the Government owned bank, pay more interest on savings and charge less for borrowing. There are too many people struggling because of what bank systems decide, systems that are geared toward more profits instead of helping customers with their finances after, but particularly
before they borrow money. Banks have always fed from other's debt, nothing has changed, and there in lies the problem, it's just getting worse, as shareholders demand more profit the banks push more debt and when people are doing it tough, they'll borrow more. and oops! another GFC, or a continuing one.
