A banking sector in denial

Sorry mate. None of this is about making real money (A banking sector in denial, July 8).
It is all paper rubbish.
You are all playing with paper. It adds little or no value to the world or the world economy.
The commodities market? What is all that about? Playing and gambling with the future price of a commodity. What value; real value does that add to the real world when you manipulate the price of wheat, corn, et al up and down, when real people are struggling to make a living.
Get rid of it. Get rid of those people who make a living making a commission on bits and pieces of paper that have nothing or little to do with the real economy.
What about my investments with Colonial? I know CBA are making a living and profit out of my super. They are cheating me of my returns. They are cheating me via poor disclosure.
Why when dividends are declared, do a see no real additional units acquired for reinvestment? Because you are cheating me of my return so that CBA execs get their bloody commissions.
The whole system is crook. And needs to be fixed.
What about The Fed. Printing and creating money; feeding it back into the crook system of crooked Financial Houses rather than feeding it back to man in the street and where real economies are at work.
It stinks to the very core.

Business is often affected by "mates" rather than process. How many would have the fortitude to fire a friend who had failed to deliver in order to save the whole? (A banking sector in denial, July 9.)
There can be no friends at the top. Its lonely up there. Too often relationships affect judgement.
Then there are the people who float uphill on relationships not ability.
As an owner, a too friendly employee strikes alarm bells. As management in a public company such "friends" are seen as necessary.
Public companies are rarely run by owners. Common motivation between shareholders and CEOs needs careful consideration by boards. Failure is often painted over and is therefore repeated. Better that its entrails are examined and different goals set.
Its easy to "sell" greed upwards. Its hard for a board not to be enticed by someone spending money that neither earned.

Note that the dissolution of the barriers between savings and trading banks was an important part of the means of creating the debt-driven asset-price bubble that disproportionately enriched the financial sector from 1983. The legal distinction between savings banks and trading banks was abolished in 1990 (A banking sector in denial, July 9).
P.S. Were the Commonwealth Bank of Australia still in public ownership, the Treasury's surplus would have been assisted by a dividend of almost exactly $5,000 million – in just one year, nearly as much as Cheating flogged it for. Worse, the Commonwealth also lost the dividend stream, every year, forever.

The air gets mighty thin up there in the clouds where the King's New Cloths are being rolled out (A banking sector in denial, July 9). It never ceases to amaze me that those CEOs who have like there is no tomorrow and no accountability, ever, cry poor when they fall on their swords. Perhaps if they had not left the real world we all live in then they might have acted with greater honesty, transparency and accountability. One can dream.

What a refreshingly honest article (A banking sector in denial, July 9).
We all wonder how the decisions we make can change the future.
This is an example of one, where the choice to keep a staff member has the long term consequence of nearly breaking the bank.

"Shows how far we have fallen, and how far we need to climb back." (A banking sector in denial, July 9.)
Climb back? Do us a favour and keep falling. Fall until the shoddy "Too Big to Fail" have failed. No amount of cleansing and fixing will get these Humpty Dumpty banks back together again. The ingrained rot is far too deep and instilled in these rapidly rotting and degenerating empires. I watch with great enthusiasm as the robber bank crooked gangsters, like Diamond and Dimon fall on their swords of lies and deceit. The world would be a much more stable, honest and politically sound place if it were not for the likes of these festering parasitic banks or JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Barclays, to name a few!

We are slowly coming to a tipping point where the Euro masses may be dis-invested of the system, i.e. unemployed and unemployable forever (A banking sector in denial, July 9).
In such cases – such as Greece and Spain – those who have no investment in the system and are denied a handhold, perhaps even a sustenance via the dole, will burn it down.
The UK is nowhere near the depths of Euro-poverty but its youth showed us they needed a bank bonus too – and no penalties – when they took over the streets.
People may not have power as individuals but they aren't stupid and when no-one goes to jail for the most gigantic and obvious of frauds, then the people mete out their own justice.
Just as history demonstrates.

Rule No 3 Never underestimate the other guy's greed. Sound familiar? (A banking sector in denial, July 9.)

I think Roger R (July 9, 11.48am) must be of the opinion that a Govt run CBA would be making money. I guess there can always be a first! (A banking sector in denial, July 9.)

Remember when talking of "falling on their swords of lies and deceit", (A banking sector in denial, July 9) that these are golden swords encrusted with diamonds both offering immediate access to many millions in immediate pay offs added to which are often pension pay offs also worth many millions to be enjoyed for the remainder of the life time of the departed, neither of which take into account the very many millions already pocketed from previous yearly pay packages doubled or trebled from the annual bonus rip-off. You could not begin to make it all up!!!!

Makes you wonder how many other reckless investment bankers are still out there masquerading as competent trading managers to fatten their bonuses (A banking sector in denial, July 9).