The Member for Kennedy, Bob Katter, is collaborating with the Citizens Electoral Council-led campaign for a Glass-Steagall separation of Australia’s banks.
Mr Katter will introduce the newly drafted Banking System Reform (Separation of Banks) Bill 2018 into the Commonwealth Parliament as a Private Member’s Bill.
The Financial Services Royal Commission in its first fortnight of hearings in March laid bare the massive mortgage fraud in the major banks, and exposed the banks as criminal enterprises. This week it is holding hearings into the big banks’ financial advice scams, and the “vertical integration” structure that enables the banks to direct depositors into their other businesses to be fleeced.
The only way to protect the economy and your savings from a financial crash and “bail-in” is with a Glass-Steagall separation of the banking system, to protect deposits from speculation.
The CEC has carefully drafted Australian legislation to separate the banks, modelled on the USA’s successful Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and the proposed 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act.
Australia desperately needs a “People’s Bank”, but the scheme announced by the Greens on 4 April is not such a bank. The Greens’ finance spokesman Senator Peter Whish-Wilson is a former investment banker, and he has distorted the People’s Bank concept into a typical investment banker’s scheme to effectively funnel even more credit into the over-stretched housing bubble.
In its first fortnight of hearings, the Banking Royal Commission drew the nation’s attention to the huge problem of mortgage fraud. The hearings showed that each of the big four banks, which together control 80 per cent of banking in Australia, have engaged in fraud on a massive scale. The fraud is not confined to the margins of the home loan business, but infects the majority of mortgages, which means most borrowers can’t afford their loans.
The terms of reference that Malcolm Turnbull gave to the Banking Royal Commission only allow it to examine specific failings of regulators in relation to banking misconduct. It is not allowed to examine “macro-prudential policy”, which is the regulatory structure of the financial system, and the policies of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), the bank regulator.
APRA/ASIC/ACCC/AUSTRAC, Royal Commission, Bail-in, Banking / Finance
