no banker left behind

Comrades,

It is the most delicious of ironies, is it not?
A merchant banker Prime Minister is forced by his junior coalition partner, the Country Party rump, to call a Royal Commission into the filthy, thieving, cheating banks, who have developed the telling of lies into an art form.
A banker, who now has to appoint someone like a former Chief Judge of the Equity Division of some Supreme Court somewhere or another, to inquire into his own kind.
And he reportedly had to be "dragged, kicking and screaming" into opening up the can or worms.
No kidding.
Never mind that it is among the most memorable, and weakest, political back flips in living memory, or that it is fatal to his spineless Prime Ministership, a mob of country bumpkins who have a grudge against the banks over some drought loans that went awry way back when, push him into a corner to out the bean counters.
That's something that has always eluded me about capitalism - how come the bankers can make billions of dollars a year in net profits just by pushing a hill of beans from one corner of the room to the other?
Never could work out how that works.
Must be something to do with what we were taught in junior high school about "compound interest".
Or maybe it's just the simple matter of "cross-currency interest rate swaps".
I don't know, no clue...except that it produces obscene wealth for a tiny few.
And here we have Mr Trundle as the perfect example with an estimated net worth of some $140M [and that was at the time of his assumption of the Prime Ministership in 2015 - no one has done an accurate assessment since], and of course that does not count the cash in Lucy's name, or the greenbacks stashed in double-blind trusts or squirreled away for a rainy day in sunny places like the Bahamas.
Jeez, his rather nice house in leafy Point Piper is valued at approx $50M, if it were put on the market tomorrow and he moved to Punchbowl.
And he doesn't even need a nice car, because he gets one for free, with a driver, as well as the exclusive use [read: free lease with servants] of Kirribilli House, just across the harbour, whose value is inestimable.
As an alumni of Vaucluse Public School, he knows a thing or two about the value of a delightful water views.
And now the Rich Dude is confined to Pandora's Box.
Back in the day when I was knocking about in radio newsrooms and a bank story surfaced, the news editor would always say to me "Craves! Can you go and get this one, and go hard. Everybody loves bank bashing".
Little wonder, there was never any shortage of material.
Have a look at just a few, and it is just a few, banking scandals that have been doing the traps of the meejah in only the last few years: ANZ financial planner jailed for stealing $1M, Westpac charged by ASIC over market manipulation of bank bill swap rates, ANZ announces $5M refund to disgruntled customers who lost a few coins in the gutters outside their bank branches, conditions imposed the the Millionaire's Factory [Macquarie Bank] licence to operate, ANZ breaches responsible lending laws, NAB adviser banned for forging client signatures, Commonwealth Bank settles class action for $80M, ANZ admits to fleecing customers out of $30M, Westpac fined $1M over breaking credit limit laws, CBA staff implicated in $75M Ponzi Scheme, banks collectively sack 69 very senior financial advisers over five years, two CBA executives charges with bribery, NAB foreign exchange trader jailed for insider trading, NAB settles sub-prime mortgage class action for $112M, sacked ANZ traders claim a blokey culture of top-shelf alcohol, sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll is rife throughout the industry.
That'll make juicy evidence.
And that's a short list of the highlights.
We're not even putting money laundering into the scheme of things here, but even Blind Freddy can see all that, and much more, amounts to a very distinct "pattern of offending behaviour".
Crikey, if the banks were people, they'd all be locked up down at Long Bay for very long stretches.
As a bright-eyed journo I spent days, weeks, months sitting in Royal Commission hearings, and there if there is one thing about them - if you are ever called to give evidence at a Royal Commission, be afraid, very afraid.
They have tremendous powers, and they use them.
If you refuse to answer their questions, it's straight to jail you go for contempt.
If you perjure yourself, its down to the Supreme Court you go, for trial, where you will be done like a dinner.
Apart from that, it's open slather...a Star Chamber...the rules of evidence go by the wayside - there are none - and it's guaranteed the Commission will do deals to get some tidy witnesses to "roll over" for a tummy tickle.
It is going to be the lawyer's picnic to end all lawyer's picnics, no doubt about that, with scores of QC's at 10 paces.
It's not as if the banks aren't cashed up.
The list of legal appearances before the Commission will make up a volume of the report on its own.
There will be thousands of witnesses, it will take years, and the costs will be absolutely stratospheric, and oh, it will be so much enormous fun.
If only - if only - we had taken Ben Chifley's 1947 position to nationalise the banks, we could have saved us all a helluva lot of time, trouble and money.
Bye-bye Mal, we'll keep the pension, you can look after yourself.
Allow me just one verse from the classic Ry Cooder song, No Banker Left Behind:

Well, I hear the whistle blowin', it plays a happy tune.
The conductor's calling "all aboad", we'll be leavin' soon.
With champagne and shrimp cocktails, and that's not all you'll find.
There's a billion dollar bonus and no banker left behind.
No banker, no banker, no banker could I find.
When the train pulled out next mornin', no banker was left behind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxaY_mxYflg