KEY POINTS:
I am fairly sure that the recently reported record profit of the New Zealand branch of the ANZ Bank was not created simply by the chance discovery of a colossal supply of 5c coins inadvertently left lying in some dusty vault by a minion employed by the bank.
ANZ announced that its New Zealand division had notched up a not-inconsiderable net profit of $1.01 billion.
I have never been entirely sure how big a billion is. I assume that when it comes to money, a billion is 1000 million.
Regardless, it seems like a rather large chunk of change by anyone's accounts.
The fact that a bank announced profit of this magnitude seems somehow unwholesome, if not downright odious.
Perhaps the only thing more unsettling than this usurious profit is the seemingly endless pronouncements from oil companies of their record profits.
It never ceases to amaze me how oil executives somehow manage to convey news of their profits with a mixture of modesty and faintly embarrassed incredulity. It is as if even they can't quite believe their good fortune.
But if they really couldn't believe how much cash they were making, they would do something about the level of their profits and reduce the price at the pump for chumps like you and me.
No doubt they can justify these earnings by claiming that they are doing their bit for the environment. By keeping prices high, they could argue, that they are preventing people driving too much, reducing the use of oil and helping alleviate global warming.
The furore over climate change in the media this week seemed to almost make the issue a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The hot air from those arguing over whether it was fact or fiction, the costs of it, and ways to thwart it must surely have increased the global temperature a degree or two.
Given the banks' record profits, I suspect most people are more worried about how they will pay their credit card bills, bank fees and mortgages than whether the world is going to be hotter and wetter.
In New Zealand, we are used to alarming weather fluctuations. We don't call it global warming, we call it the weekend.
Still, in a charmingly Kiwi act of civil disobedience the Climaction Coalition, a group of Auckland climate change activists, will block a portion of Queen St tomorrow. Although they don't have permission to close the street they are apparently negotiating with the police. What a perfectly civil act of disobedience.
One can only wonder, though, how keeping traffic locked in the city centre, spewing fumes from untuned engines into the city's far from pristine air, really helps their cause.
Spokeswoman Gin Barker said, "When it will finish will depend on the day". Let's hope it's a warm one. Or would that merely emphasise their point?
