Australia’s greedy banks have enjoyed four interest rate cuts in the past 4 months. They have only passed on part of those cuts to mortgage holders in reduced interest rates and have passed on none of it to credit card borrowers. Credit card interest rates remain far too high.

Those Australian households facing financial stress with mounting credit card debt are continually being ignored by banks and by the ineffective Rudd government, who last month openly invited banks to only pass on part of the RBA interest rate cuts and who have also recently participated in further reducing low levels of bank competition by shamefully allowing Westpac to take over the St George Bank (formerly St George Building Society).

Australian banks have been gorging themselves  on fees charged to their customers in recent years because they have far too little competition.

How much do the Australian banks pay the major political parties  in “donations” to get such favorable treatment?

The Rudd government recently has taken huge swaths of money away from retirees who rely on interest rate investments by these massive interest rate cuts. Most of those same retirees have also had their superannuation pie slashed by share price devaluations. Yet the major beneficiaries of the interest income taken away from them have been the greedy banks.

If the junior politicians that we have running this country were sincere and serious about kick starting the economy, they would be making it law that variable rate products like mortgages and credit cards are tied to the RBA’s interest rate (and not by locking in a wider margin to start with).

While small businesses like Australian retailers are sweating on the consumer getting enough of a break to buy Christmas presents the bailed out big business banks are  screwing those consumers for unrealistically high interest rates on credit cards, with the Rudd government’s blessing.