Bank's result should be applauded, but questioned, seriously

Australia’s Commonwealth Bank should be applauded for its reported profit of $7.1 billion.

The Commonwealth Bank
 as it was in 1912.

The bank has fulfilled its “reason” beautifully and because of that epitomises the essence of the capitalistic customs in which civilization is enmeshed.

The bank is performing and behaving exactly in accordance with those behaviours; yardsticks set by the community, both here and overseas.

Considerations of the past year of operations by Australia’s biggest bank are neither right nor wrong, but find their place in either camp when subjected to personal ideologies.

The Commonwealth Bank Act in 1911 resulted in the founding of the bank in 1912, empowered then to conduct both savings and general banking business.

Today, the bank has grown to a business with more than 800 000 shareholders and 52 000 workers in the Commonwealth Bank Group.

The Commonwealth Banks Restructuring Act of 1990 converted the Commonwealth Bank from a statutory authority to a public company with conventional share capital and part-Government ownership.

On 17 April 1991, the organisation became a public company with a share capital governed by the Corporations Law and then was fully privatised in three stages from 1991 until July 1996.

So, as a private company the bank has adhered to the philosophies and ideals on which it is built in that it has enriched stakeholders, been a good corporate citizen and portrayed itself as a beacon of decency in the financial dynamic.

Detached from the intricacies of the financial world and remote from its demands and urgencies, criticism can easily and quickly percolate to the surface, particularly, if one is immune to the fascinations of finance.

Stripped of all its finery and various ornaments the world of money has supressed the beautiful intricacies and wonder of being human and is little more than sophisticated gambling in which the main players rarely lose.

The finance industry is the engine of “business as usual” and buttressed by distorted constructions of what is best for man, a few grow fabulously rich and many equally poor, as we roar, with our eyes shut, our breath held and our good sense stilled, toward the abyss.

Shrill and comforting adages leap from the lips of the business as usual boosters, but they take no account of mounting environmental costs; debts that are beyond payment by the world’s existing financial infrastructure.

The way ahead is about restructuring and retrofitting our financial system, saying “good-bye” to existing, but costly social, resource and environmental good times and putting out the welcome mat to an austerity that will bring with it an enriched way of living we don’t yet understand.

Profits of $7 billion; more for many corporations are something our earth can no longer afford; we should demand that people have priority over profit.

Corporations decry socialism, but use it when it suits

Corporations decry socialism, but turn to it immediately the rigours of capitalism fail to boost bank balances and collapse threatens.
Examples of this apparent guilt-free switching of allegiances proliferate seemingly excavating the true meaning of the free market – profit in any way you can, for as long as you can and when it goes sour, turn to an enrich yourself from the public purse using nebulous arguments. Although iniquitous, those arguments have a powerful emotional pull in that they appeal to human values that are rooted, mistakenly, in the belief that the broad well-being of society is inextricably linked to the success of the at-risk corporation.


Henry Ford

Interestingly, that very corporation that has championed capitalistic behaviour and subsequently become rich beyond imagination sees its saviour in socialism and shows no embarrassment as it reaches out it hand asking for money.
The corporation’s hand does not shake, nor does it show any sign of discomfit or the slightest humiliation as it asks for government aid, conveniently forgetting that it stood among critics of government interference, frequently damning it for humane policies designed to protect its prime resource, its people. 

The world-wide car industry, and of direct concern, that of Australia, has long stood at the front of the queue seeking government handouts, endlessly arguing that health of the country’s economy is inherently related to that of the motor industry.

The industry has repeatedly returned to the public trough over the last decade it has gobbled down some $12 billion and now it is back for more. That payout, notably, is bigger than that of any other individual industry.

The world-wide car industry, and of direct concern, that of Australia, has long stood at the front of the queue seeking government handouts, endlessly arguing that health of the country’s economy is inherently related to that of the motor industry.

The industry has repeatedly returned to the public trough over the last decade gobbling down some $12 billion and now it is back for more. That payout, notably, is bigger than that of any other individual industry.

Running a business becomes easy once you understand, and can implement the idea that you first must privatise the profits and socialize the costs, just as our motor industry has been doing for years, and then create a felicitous and imaginary situation in which you are too big and too important to fail.

Rather than investing endlessly in a fundamentally fragile industry that does nothing but deplete the world’s finite resources and fill up earth’s natural sinks with its wastes, we should be using that cash and those finite resources to build a way of living in which the emphasis is on the permanency of people rather than the fleeting pleasure of machines.

It was in 1945 that Henry Ford finally wilted under the pressure of marketeers and stopped building cars with few refinements and as cheap as he could to follow Chevrolet as it introduced fashion and frivolous fineries through a new model every year.

Car makers apparently abhor socialism, but after successfully socialising the costs, it is now attempting to protect those privatised profits with a “world car”, a homogenised product that has that sense of communism about it.