Australian banks

Commonwealth Bank is out with its annual profit result and has everyone buzzing.

APRA yesterday released its new criteria guidelines for access to the RBA’s Committed Liquidity Facility (CLF), which is designed as the fall back for banks should the global financial system ever seize again.

By Leith van Onselen Speaking at the Westpac business lunch yesterday, the chief of Westpac Bank, Gail Kelly, urged businesses to brace for a prolonged period of sluggish growth, low interest rates, and ongoing consumer caution.

Deputy Governor of the RBA, Guy Debelle, gave a good speech last night that sensibly provided support for Australia to adopt the structures of global financial re-regulation: The BIS Committee on Global Financial Stability, on which I sit, has published some work on that recently, but there is more to be done.

J.P.

There is the usual bleating from the lobby but for the most part Treasurer Chris Bowen’s new bank levy is being well received.

Here’s a quiet correction that’s been issued but not confessed by the AFR.

Another interesting tidbit from Credit Suisse this morning.

From the SMH: Victoria-based lender Gippsland Secured Investments has frozen $150 million of savings from mostly local investors, putting the future of savings among thousands of rural Victorians in doubt.

A new note from Westpac makes it clear today that although interest rate cuts have so far failed to generate much economic return in traditionally sensitive sectors, they are at least reducing arrears at a good clip.

Former Future Fund chairman and CBA CEO David Murray has given everyone a post-GFC caning this afternoon: “Governments in Europe an the US have not faced up to structural reform and fiscal discipline as they should have and that’s raised the questions of what is the role of the central bank.

The emerging debate about bank funding is heating up.

Here is how Wikipedia defines rent-seeking: In public choice theory, rent-seeking is an attempt to obtain economic rent by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by creating new wealth.

The Australian picks up a useful story today on the move by the Bank of International Settlements on the use of internal risk weighting asset models to lower capital reserves.

It’s never been formerly announced but it’s been commented on repeatedly by bankers that for the past few years APRA has insisted that major banks match new deposits to loans on a one-to-one basis.