| Thursday, November 01, 2012 10:54 AM

We’ve seen most of the banks reporting profits this week and the Green Party hasn’t liked it.

The banks of course are very successful. They’re making bucket loads, or most of them are. I like to look at the positive side of it. Banks are making bucket loads because people are borrowing and they only borrow when they’re feeling good. They’re also making bucket loads because they’re spending less time chasing and writing off bad debt - another sign that the economy is going well.

This all bypasses the Greens of course who seem fixated on two things - the profits are unacceptably high and the profits go to Australia. On the second point they’re right. Most banks are Australian owned.  But in that there’s your first clue as to why the Greens might be out to lunch if not out of touch with most of the rest of us. We have alternatives. Not all banks are Australian. We have local banks and in local banks we have the option to keep the money here. The simple fact the Australian banks remain far and away the largest is the specific result of most of us not caring or moving. So it’s not like were aggrieved as well and we’re trapped – we’re not. It’s just not the issue the Greens make it out to be.

Then we get to the perplexing area of profit. How much is too much? If you even put a number on it, how would that be calculated? In calculating that, what would you do? Regulate it? Would the Greens make it a law not to make too much money? And if they did, what would a bank or a business do if they looked like they were going to break that rule? Tell their customers to go to another bank? Shred the money? Throw it into the street?

All of this is a salutary lesson in just how wacky these people are. And there is sadness in it too. The Greens could actually be an effective party if only they spent more time on things like the environment as opposed to communist style social engineering. On the environment, they could do something if they wanted to do a cross party sort of operation. The environment touches all political parties and a lot could be achieved in a broad approach but they choose to spend their time on fiscal nuttiness that freaks people out. In doing that they isolate themselves.

The hope was that post-Bradford and Kedgley they’d actually reboot themselves and morph into a true Green Party. But their foray into banking this week shows while the names may change, the madness hasn’t.

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