Concerning politics and money

Like all of us in these troubled times Labour MP and shadow finance spokesperson, David Cunliffe, is concerned.

In his press release  commenting on this week's Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC) review of the Reserve Bank's financial stability report, Cunliffe expressed some of these concerns on our behalf.

The essence of his statement was that Australian banks are ripping us off during this great recession and they'd better stop.

"Kiwis believe in a fair go for all but will not stand for being ripped off," Cunliffe said.
"Today's report is a strong bipartisan statement of concern that the banking sector would do well to heed."

It's hard to disagree with the sentiments - it always feels like banks are ripping us off - but I don't know how much heed any high-ranking Australasian bank official will give to the FEC report published on the Parliament website this week.

Although Cunliffe's release describes the FEC report as "hard hitting" it doesn't contain any credible action plan to rein in the naughty, greedy Australian banks other than to politely request that they play a bit nicer.

"We encourage the banking sector to consider carefully their corporate citizenship, especially when taxpayers are effectively providing the financial sector with large amounts of liquidity... We urge the banking and finance sector to better reflect movements in the OCR in their lending rates," is about as strong-worded as the FEC report gets.

On the same day the FEC report was released a slew of banks announced they were pushing up long-term mortgage rates.

 

- David Chaplin