People's Inquiry Findings: an open letter

Following advice from an open letter by some of Australia's most consistently wrong economists The ShadowLands has held a People's Inquiry into Australia's financial system. We are stoked today to present our findings in the form of an open letter...


Dear Top Economists,

You wanted an inquiry? Well, okay, we've looked into it, and here are the people's findings:

1. First of all, anyone who writes an open letter is usually just an attention seeker. If you want to convince someone of something, it is normal practice to write them a letter. If you want to big-note yourself, you write an open letter. When you look at the signatories of open letters, the first thing is to figure out what they really want. In this case, it looks like they wanted a) publicity so that they can big note themselves and b) in the possible event that anything comes of it, latch themselves onto yet another government teat, in the form of directorships or some other not overly taxing advisory work.

2. Australia's banking system and the regulations surrounding them have protected Australia from the massive foreclosures that have happened overseas. So you think it's time to change the system?

3. The global financial crisis was partly caused because of government meddling in the financial system in the US making it too easy for people to get money. So you want to do what to Australia's financial system?

4. Governments are bad at private enterprise - just look at Russia's foray into the energy business.

5. Do any of you remember the story of the State Bank of South Australia? It was a people's bank that bled people dry.

6. Yes, the major banks are not our friends, but if you have a problem with it, for fuck's sake, just join a credit union.

7. Get your beady eyes and your greasy hands off of our public funds for once and bugger off back to whatever stinking corner you came from.

We hope these findings have been useful to you.

Yours etc

The People