ANZ Auckland. None of the directors lives in New Zealand

Not a single director of ANZ is a New Zealander. Today it was announced that ANZ made  $1 billion profit and of course it was sent to Australia.

So looking at their website we find their board comprises seven men and one woman. Two live in Sydney, four in Melbourne, one has homes in both Sydney and New York and one lives in Singapore. They have backgrounds in law, accountancy and one was an ex Reserve Bank of Australia Governor. No surprises there. And of course they are on the boards of other companies like CocaCola and one was an advisor to Goldmann Sachs.

Bernard Hickey was on Closeup TVNZ tonight explaining how their margins have widened. People are paying higher mortgages and investors are getting lower returns. But this isn’t all. A look at their website shows they are dealing in derivatives like spots, options and forwards. Then there are spot minors, forward majors etc. All sorts of “financial instruments”  that not even bankers understand themselves sometimes. This calls for a financial transaction tax.

And of course there is the small matter of fractional reserve banking and the fact that private banks create and control the money supply. No wonder their buildings are the biggest in each city. No wonder they make record profits when the country is in a recession.

Our policy is that “We would require corporations that choose to operate in more than one country to charter an independent local subsidiary in our country with majority ownership here.”

The TV item said that 95% of profits from our banks now go overseas. How can we maintain any national integrity when we are controlled by overseas owned banks? This issue must be a priority of any self respecting government.