The public hearings of the Australian Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking Superannuation and Financial Services generate voluminous coverage through the logical (if not necessarily entirely persuasive) presentation of an unchallenged final evidential pitch. The Commissioner is invited to take that pitch into consideration in determining the cause and effect of misconduct. It does not constitute a finding in itself. This critical point is sometimes lost. It is an age-old adage of journalism that if it bleeds, it leads. As with all good stories, acceptance of the narrative presented requires a suspension of disbelief regarding competing interpretations. This applies even if the tears are a consequence of avarice or unrealistic assumptions, the centrality of buyer beware in legitimising contracts, or restricted regulatory mandates, itself a consequence of partisan and bipartisan political failure. The recently concluded two-week hearings on the provision of loans to Small and Medium Sized Business was no exception. While Counsel Assisting, Rowena Orr, and her colleagues have been careful to point to individual cases of malfeasance, they have been less than convincing on the underpinning structural conditions that have facilitated such a state of affairs. These conditions include how and why the financial system operates in the way that it does; the power and limits of regulatory capacity (or willingness to use that power to the full, or even on a coherent and cohesive basis). This lacuna is unfortunate. It is not that they do not have the information. Indeed, it is material that the Royal Commission itself has commissioned (along with submissions made by interested parties, the majority of which are not, contrary to standard practice, disclosed). More importantly, the results of independent investigations in the US and Britain, each funded on an exponentially larger scale, raise uncomfortable questions that suggest, inescapably, regulatory and political failure that appear, to date, unexplored, if not ignored. Even more peculiarly, the regular Friday afternoon dumping of background papers by the commission has become a standard operating feature that is often reported on but rarely analysed. As a consequence, much explanatory power is lost. One hopes that Commissioner Hayne, at least, is paying attention; integrating the precis provided by Ms Orr and colleagues (easy pickings to say the least) with both the expert analysis and the bulk of the non-published submissions to help inform a broader, balanced and more substantial narrative. International experience and public distrust in regulatory decision making reinforce what Judge Jed Rakoff of the Federal Court of the Southern District in Manhattan contemptuously derided, in a recent visit to Melbourne, as the privileging of a “facade of enforcement”; the preference for an easy headline over substantive punishment with true deterrence effect. One could argue that Counsel Assisting is making a similar mistake. Funny things are, indeed, happening on the way to the forum. In the most recent hearings inMelbourne, Senior Assisiting Counsel, Michael Hodge, made a boldclaim. There was no evidence, he argued, that Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) attempted to further profit from its acquisition of BankWest from Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) in 2008. It had been suggested continuously but without evidence since the acquisition that CBA may have attempted to offset the purchase price of $2.1 billion by re-engineering loan terms, thereby gouging customers. It is an unmistakable fact of life post-Global Financial Crisis that the off-selling of problematic loans was key to central bank strategies around the world, not least in Ireland, where the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) became a de facto “bad bank.” As part of its own performance indicators, NAMA, in turn, sold these loans on to private market institutions when politically possible to do so – and pocketed a hefty return. The private market institutions, in turn, tightened restrictions on performing and non-performing loans (something it was politically impossible for NAMA itself to do). These latter institutions, largely private equity firms, were often described as profiteering on misfortune, earning the moniker “vulture funds.” In Australia, the difference was the vulture funds were in fact deposit-taking institutions that held a banking licence. “In any view these [initially at point of acquisition] were already distressed loans,” Mr Hodge intoned, stating little more than the obvious but obviating any need for a case study. So much for any tears; more a question of sparing blushes. And those with most to fear from any detailed exposition was not necessarily CBA or the executives it put in place to run BankWest. These, after all, were profit-making institutions that had both a prudential and commercial imperative to protect the value (or as increasingly became apparent minimise the worthlessness) of its own loan book. Much more problematic, however, was how and why the BankWest loan book was so impaired in the first place. Here the answers were not provided at the time – or since – by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), which had primary regulatory oversight. Ironically the evidence comes from overseas through the British Parliamentary Committee on Banking Standards, which raised significant red flags about Australia’s capacity and complacency at the regulatory level. As is so often the case, the warning was ignored throughout the financial system; swept under the carpet Law and Financial Markets Review, 2018 Vol. 12, No. 2, 53–56, https://doi.org/10.1080/17521440.2018.1485544

中文翻译：

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墨尔本来信：审慎监管的行为（和成本）

澳大利亚皇家委员会就银行养老金和金融服务中的不当行为举行的公开听证会通过逻辑（如果不一定完全具有说服力）呈现无可争议的最终证据，产生了大量报道。请专员在确定不当行为的原因和影响时考虑这一点。它本身并不构成调查结果。这个临界点有时会丢失。新闻界有句古老的格言，如果它流血，它就会领先。与所有好的故事一样，接受所呈现的叙述需要暂停对相互竞争的解释的怀疑。即使眼泪是由于贪婪或不切实际的假设、买方在使合同合法化或受限制的监管要求中的核心地位而导致的，这也适用，本身是党派和两党政治失败的结果。最近结束的为期两周的关于向中小企业提供贷款的听证会也不例外。虽然法律顾问 Rowena Orr 和她的同事们一直小心翼翼地指出个别渎职案件，但对于促成这种事态发展的基础结构条件，他们并没有令人信服。这些条件包括金融体系如何以及为何以这种方式运作；监管能力的权力和限制（或充分利用该权力的意愿，甚至在连贯和有凝聚力的基础上）。这个漏洞是不幸的。并不是他们没有这些信息。事实上，皇家委员会本身委托的材料（连同相关方提交的材料，与标准做法相反，其中大部分未披露）。更重要的是，在美国和英国进行的独立调查的结果，每一项的资助规模都呈指数级增长，提出了令人不安的问题，这些问题不可避免地表明，监管和政治失败，迄今为止，即使没有被忽视，也未得到探索。更特别的是，该委员会在周五下午定期倾倒背景文件已成为经常报道但很少进行分析的标准操作特征。结果，失去了很多解释力。人们希望海恩专员至少会注意；将奥尔女士及其同事提供的精确信息（至少可以说是简单的选择）与专家分析和大量未发表的意见相结合，以帮助提供更广泛的信息，平衡和更实质性的叙述。国际经验和公众对监管决策的不信任强化了曼哈顿南区联邦法院的 Jed Rakoff 法官在最近访问墨尔本时轻蔑地嘲笑为“执法门面”的特权；相对于具有真正威慑效果的实质性惩罚，更喜欢简单的标题。有人可能会争辩说 Counsel Assisting 犯了类似的错误。有趣的事情确实发生在去论坛的路上。在墨尔本最近的听证会上，高级协助律师迈克尔·霍奇 (Michael Hodge) 做出了大胆的声明。他辩称，没有证据表明澳大利亚联邦银行 (CBA) 试图通过 2008 年从苏格兰哈利法克斯银行 (HBOS) 手中收购 BankWest 来进一步获利。自收购以来，一直有人提出但没有证据表明 CBA 可能试图通过重新设计贷款条款来抵消 21 亿美元的收购价格，从而欺骗客户。全球金融危机后生活中一个明确无误的事实是，出售有问题的贷款是世界各地央行战略的关键，尤其是在爱尔兰，国家资产管理署 (NAMA) 成为事实上的“坏账”。银行。” 作为其自身绩效指标的一部分，NAMA 反过来在政治上可能的情况下将这些贷款出售给私人市场机构——并从中获得可观的回报。反过来，私人市场机构收紧了对不良贷款和不良贷款的限制（这在政治上对 NAMA 本身来说是不可能做到的）。后面这些机构，主要是私募股权公司，经常被描述为因不幸而牟取暴利，获得“秃鹫基金”的绰号。在澳大利亚，不同之处在于秃鹫基金实际上是持有银行牌照的存款机构。“无论如何，这些[最初在收购时]已经是不良贷款，”霍奇先生吟诵道，他的陈述不过是显而易见的，但无需进行案例研究。泪流满面；更多的是避免脸红的问题。而那些最害怕任何详细说明的人不一定是 CBA 或它为经营 BankWest 而设立的高管。毕竟，这些都是营利性机构，它们在保护自身贷款账簿的价值（或者越来越明显地将无价值最小化）方面具有审慎和商业责任。然而，问题更大，首先是 BankWest 的贷款账簿如何以及为何如此受损。在这里，澳大利亚审慎监管局 (APRA) 在当时或之后没有提供答案，该局具有主要的监管监督权。具有讽刺意味的是，这些证据是通过英国议会银行标准委员会从海外获得的，该委员会对澳大利亚在监管层面的能力和自满情绪提出了重要警告。通常情况下，整个金融系统都忽视了警告；法律和金融市场评论，2018 年卷。12, No. 2, 53–56, https://doi.org/10.1080/17521440.2018.1485544 它具有主要的监管监督。具有讽刺意味的是，这些证据是通过英国议会银行标准委员会从海外获得的，该委员会对澳大利亚在监管层面的能力和自满情绪提出了重要警告。通常情况下，整个金融系统都忽视了警告；法律和金融市场评论，2018 年卷。12, No. 2, 53–56, https://doi.org/10.1080/17521440.2018.1485544 它具有主要的监管监督。具有讽刺意味的是，这些证据是通过英国议会银行标准委员会从海外获得的，该委员会对澳大利亚在监管层面的能力和自满情绪提出了重要警告。通常情况下，整个金融系统都忽视了警告；法律和金融市场评论，2018 年卷。12, No. 2, 53–56, https://doi.org/10.1080/17521440.2018.1485544