Results of our Populous Whinge today.

A win for the people. ..I hope.

One thing I have determined, the private sector cannot self regulate.

But then I'm just a populist having a whinge.

 

Re the banks...

The government need to embed regulators within the bank. The cost should be born by the banks from the dividends before payments are allocated. Senior executive salaries too. If shareholders are the ones who are to benefit or lose from the executives decisions, it should be their gain or loss not the customer's.

 

Yes, I agree.
There should be some jail time coming as a result of this RC.
Especially for AMP.

 

Everyone was supposed to have learned that already back in 1929.

 

Seriously???

The royal commissions we don’t need has turn up some serious issues with the financial sector and your belief that embedding regulators inside the financial sector is the answer…

So I ask, Seriously???

Your complaint for a Royal commission is that it has uncovered corrupt dealings in the financial sector justifies the Royal commission and demonised those who had dodgy dealings. So $600m in public money did what??? Did it find evidence enough to charge people for crimes???

Again seriously???

So why am I being so facetious??? Because this Royal commission I refuse to believe we had to have uncovered the one thing I believe would have gone unnoticed without it. Which is far more detrimental to the financial sector than the crimes and corrupt activity brought to light. That is the failure of the regulators to not only report these activities but to prosecute them. It demonstrated the fact they were known and ignored, that it was accepted by the regulators as acceptable behaviour and that it was far easier to simply ignore it than pursue action of any description.

BUT do we hear, charge the regulators??? Do we hear why they do not police the very laws and regulations imposed in the sector??? NO…

We hear “government should embed regulators into the financial sector who should wear these costs” which I must say ignores the very principle of the cost being paid by the customer. This will stop the sector from doing anything wrong… How??? We have just witnessed that the regulators have been complicit in letting them happen…

So once again seriously??? Have you missed the entire issue here??? IT is the Regulators that have failed here… Ergo it is the Government who has failed here… Liberal, National, Greens and Labor… I also did not believe we had have this commission and nothing from the financial sector to date has demonstrate me wrong. BUT I was wrong in the fact the regulators have been showing systematic failure to oversee, action and regulate the sector at all, which has been the biggest eye opener of the commission…

 

The regulators have failed. We need to know why. I suspect it's a lack of political will to ensure they are effective. As long as it was in the shadows it was okay, no political harm, but when it came out into the open there was a big to-do. Damn I'm trying hard not to be cynical but with our politicians - all sides - not representing our interests but vested interests, I'm not holding my breath.

 

I thought I made it quite clear that it was a failure in regulation that undermined the mess in the financial sector. I also stated that any regulative authority needs to be totally independent of both the government and the financial sector.
This situation is a failure in policies going back generations, starting with the loss of a public national bank which was a keystone policy to deregulate the financial sector.
It's about control ,nothing to do with what is best for the people but everything to do with keeping governments in power and others in positions of wealth and power.

 

No what you made clear is that you believe in greater regulation… The rest is just window dressing.


This situation is not failure in policy, but a failure in actioning the policy…


Listen, I was rather frivolous about the point because I have to admit my failure to support a royal commission into this issue. While I do consider the problem did exist, I considered that regulation was in place to hold account and to force compliance. I never considered that the regulators were deliberately ignoring not just adherent behaviour but illegal behaviour because,, ERR,, I don’t know. Perhaps they don’t know how to do their job, maybe they thought it just too hard. Seriously, I don’t know. Nothing has implicated political pressure but I am guessing that may still come forward.


But the fact that these financial corporations clearly show they will not just bend but actively breach the law in their abundant effort to create profits in an area where government assistance and regulations obviously favour their business over the consumer should be no surprise to anybody. The failure of bodies to meet their requirements to police and report such activity is.

Ok, so always in these cases we hear “independent authorities”… We hear the that selling public assets was catalyst to the issues.


So independence… SO in your model, the banks will be forced to pay for embedded regulators… Umm you don’t see a problem here??? Toss a little more money to turn blind eye??? I am not sure how easy you want to make a corruptible model which will do nothing of which it is intended. Again, the issue demonstrated is not the actions of the financial sector but the failure of the regulators. Everybody is bouncing of the walls about what the banks have done yet the regulators seem to be 2nd to any concern. Why???
You say ” I thought I made it quite clear that it was a failure in regulation” yet in the origin of you thread “One thing I have determined, the private sector cannot self regulate.” You made the point that the financial sector cannot regulate itself. So Nowhere have you made it clear that it is failure of the regulators or regulations. Now if you want to clear that up, you can. Unless you point out some failure in my points or bring something new to the table I have said my piece and very much agree with Diuretic, rather than pointing out what we need now, I would rather find out why it failed first.

 

The regulators acted like the government and everyone else concerned, turned a blind eye, it's the figures that mattered.

Yes the regulators were weak and inept and I would say somewhat shackled, but by their own admission a lot outright lied or deceived them.

While ever the driving force is money, greed and hunger for power will rule.

 

What is a "whinge"?

 

Whining about something

 

Well yeah, I would have thought that was given.

The question is what was the greed for in the failure of reglatory administration? It is rather simplistic to simply say they were deceived as many points were questioned answered without accountability... I think my original point remains the issue. that their is no justification of simply trying to over regulate an industry because the current regulation and regulators failed to carry out their job.

 

No one is talking about over regulating, I'm talking about the LNP ideology that business takes care of business, the workers,the sick, the unemployed, the unemployable, the aged etc take care of themselves. Minimal government, minimum regulation.

The whole problem though is that the driving force is supposed to money. There is no room for humanity or the human condition.

 

Really, the biggest eye opener was that a underfunded government department was inept was a bigger eye opener then the fact that the biggest and most trusted financial and insurance institutions were deliberately engaging in criminal activities.

 

Our regulators have been captured by the interests they seek to regulate. Mind you our politicians show no example, moving from cabinet to industry as a lobbyist or paid mouthpiece on the back of their parliamentary careers.

 

The Commonwealth Bank, the National Bank of Australia, the Australian Mutual Providence, all knowingly engaged at criminal activity at the highest level, and you are amazed that a underfunded, understaffed ,relatively powerless government department failed. It's my eyes that have been opened.

 

It's a game they play with the lives of others. Most don't need the money it's just power and greed the two cornerstones of capitalism.

The motivation, the driving force behind capitalism is eating the weaker dog. It's that reason that the true capitalists love it. It's the game.

 

Whilst agreeing with your take on ’the game’ we need to understand that not all capitalists a amoral, greedy and vicious.
Those who aren’t however are often strangely silent when it comes to dog eat dog economics. Given the truth of that old Hungarian saying “The fish rots from the head down’ what is needed is a thorough, fresh and serious criticism of the likes of Ayn Rand/ Ludwig von Mises/ Alan Greenspan et al from academia who’ve made the awful mistake of never taking their kind seriously due to intellectual snobbery.

 

Oh I definitely agree that not all capitalists are in that category.

Without going into a history of capitalism it has undergone many evolutions to reach what we have today. None has been close to pure capitalism as in my opinion capitalism is as achievable as perpetual motion.

There inherent problems or the solutions to them are what is causing most of our problems.

We can always continue to alter the path but until we realise that what we believe or more like hope will happen never can no matter what we do to delay the inevitable end.

Our only hope is to pursue the answer to future problems now rather than accept what we have to later.

Sometimes we have to admit the car is beyond repair and buy a new one. The only option is to repair the old one, but it's still an old one, designed for a time gone by.

 

You rightly draw attention to a fact few want to face. Not only has the planet have no form of pure capitalism, especially of the Randian kind, no form of pure communism exists. It may have breifly existed for limited areas in limited numbers living in situations such as the early Israeli kibbutz. Take mainland China as another example. The military/ mafia/ capitalist hierchy running that huge nation cannot claim to be anything like a communist society. Their usege of the term ‘Chinese Communist Party’ is itself a sick joke. Not to worry, all this will fade into insignificance as artificial intelligence takes over ruling us all.

 

You're no optimist are you?

 

Blind optimism can be destructive in that until and unless we recognise what needs to be changed we wont be able to do anything to improve our lot.
Sticking your head in the sand isn’t going to save you.

 

Yes, you are talking about regulation, after all you suggest, independent regulation, being embedded in financial institutions, being paid by the financial institutions. This is over regulation as the original regulators failed to do their job, what makes you think your model will change the situation??? OH wait, you will employ regulators to regulate the independent regulators which will require more regulation to be instituted. Since the failure is not the regulation but the failure to enact it, what would you call it???

I think your totally missed the point here. You want to suggest this is only of the making of the Coalition, all these issues raised by the commissions has been the product of both these major parties. I think you simply posting your bias…

Oh no, we are back to attempt to assign morality to inanimate objects.

We know you don’t understand capitalism but enjoy the many aspects you agree with. We know you don’t understand what the corruption of capitalism is. This subject mind you should present the issue in clear colour for you. BUT it is not money that has any thought of anything either humanity or not. It is the people who use it and let it be used in such fashions.

Since you clearly want to attempt to demonstrate partisanship attitude to the subject one must wonder exactly what credible claim you wish to pose here. Perhaps you were right; you’re just having the populist whinge.

 

Well, perhaps you would like to point out what illegal activity came to light in the Royal commission that was not public knowledge beforehand??? Are you suggesting the extremely poor financial advice to investors and customers was illegal??? Perhaps you could tell us what government made it illegal to give poor financial advice???

You see this is the thing that makes me wonder, you’re complaining about the activities of the banks yet you don’t know what legislation they have breached.
Another thing, you’re suggesting the financial regulators are underfunded government department. Perhaps you could provide some sort of context to that or are you just telling us it is underfunded because you heard it somewhere else. Maybe you could put that into context of flat out ignoring breaches of financial sector they knew and simply did nothing to fix such as the billing of dead people, which Neither the ALP or LNP have made illegal to this point in time and has been known for the last decade…

But hey, the problem is me not the distinct failure in bureaucracy to actually do their job. Sh/t, anybody who expects people in government do their job are just stupid aren’t we??? We should just push more regulation, more bureaucracy and peddle more money so we can have more people to point the finger at when people don’t do their job and things go wrong.

Yes, the failure of regulators to do their job is major issue. BUT The eye opening thing is, even you want to give them a free pass. Oh those poor underfunded bureaucrats, how could they actually get anything done, clearly they did even get enough budget to pay the phone bill to call these institutes and question their actions…

 

Few eye openers for me. Just another demonstration ideology can blind governments into states of rigid denial in order to protect their unrealistic political and economic theories.