Financial freedom:the enticing dream

Financial freedom.

A dream we all share.

Very saleable, too.

Indeed, it is one of the main hooks the banks use to encourage us to use their services.

So it should be no surprise to find that Australia’s bank chiefs, themselves, value this dream, very highly.

Naturally, that includes those at the very top.

The Productivity Commission noted, earlier this week, that Australia’s top 20 CEO’s must struggle by, on an average salary of just $10 million a year.

Australia’s top bankers would certainly be in this very select group.

Tom Wolfe called their counterparts, in the United States, the Masters of the Universe, in his  highly prescient 1987 novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities.  Twenty two years later, they became the very people whose reckless greed came close to wrecking the global financial system, with catastrophic results.

Australia’s bankers, certainly, have been more restrained.  They stopped writing the word “Yes” on their walls, many years ago.

But their ideas of their own worth are similar.

That led them yesterday, to issue a statement praising the Productivity Commission, for rejecting the idea of caps, on their salaries and those of  other top executives, in this country.

David Bell, chief executive of the Australian Bankers’ Association, said:”The community is fortunate  to have an economic research organisation that can produce quality work in a very difficult public policy environment.”

We couldn’t agree more.  Indeed, we are constantly amazed by the wisdom of those who agree with us.