By Jo Nova
It’s a bankers job to manage the Indian Ocean dipole, don’t you know?
People have noticed that coal, oil and gas projects that were legal and looked profitable were still unable to get funding from the Big Bankers. You might think it was the elected government’s role to figure out the complex trade-offs of how to keep the lights on, avoid unemployment and protect the spotted quoll (and the nation). But even if the people vote, and the government approves, the bankers can still say “No”. And they did…
The Commonwealth Bank piously declared in August 2024 that they will no longer provide finance to oil and gas companies that don’t have a “Paris Transition Plan”. The bank was helpfully taking on the role of judge, jury and financial executioner.
Yet, thanks to the Straits of Hormuz, suddenly instead of earning bragging rights for their climate saintliness, they face questions about how they let the country down.
Heat on banks’ energy financing
By Sarah Ison and Rosie Lewis, The Australian
Australia’s big banks have defended their financing policies against criticism they fail to support oil, coal and gas projects, as Foreign Minister Penny Wong turns to China to shore up fuel and fertiliser supplies in a high-stakes diplomacy mission that also includes Japan and South Korea.
The trip comes amid concerns from the Coalition that projects that could have delivered oil and fuel had not been offered enough support from not only the government but the banks.
The mindset of the bankers was that coal was unthinkable:
Pembroke Resources founder and ex-chair Barry Tudor laid bare the hurdles [his coal project] faced …
“At one point during the development of Olive Downs, a senior executive at a big four Australian bank told me he really liked our project. He understood it, he believed it would succeed. But he also made something else clear: it simply would not be worth his while explaining to senior management why the bank was financing a new coal project.”
It even extended all the way down to petty cash and loans for a LandCruiser:
As Mr Irving [NAB CEO] and other banking heads rebuffed suggestions there was some kind of explicit “prohibition” on financing carbon-intensive projects, Mr Tudor revealed Pembroke’s house bank had once refused to provide simple financing for a LandCruiser because the vehicle would be used in helping deliver a coal project.
Sometime in the last ten years ago the bankers of the world decided it was their duty to manage the ocean currents and jet streams of Earth, or to at least predict them, and figure out the so-called risks to the economy. Not that they did due diligence on the science, or checked the modelling. They just took the GroupThink and added compound interest.
Westpac Bank Transition Plan
It took years for the Banker Blob to spread into global weather control
Way back in 2010 the National Australia Bank was a founding member of “Climate Active” and was the first bank downunder to become carbon neutral. But lately all the Australian banks felt the need to have a “Climate Change Commitment”– they just want to save the world, right?. Most of these “commitments” may have been trivially symbolic — like NAB installing 2,000 solar panels, and LED lights in all their branches. Nevertheless, overtly or tacitly, it appears the message got through to the staff at least, who became afraid of upsetting the boss.
The media cheered them on, the politicians said “bravo”, and most Australians had better things to do (or so they thought). But the levers of power and accountability were being taken out of Parliament and being handed to bankers. Most of whom should have been serving their country, rather than serving The Blob, the UN, the WEF, and all the agencies of globalist power. But the bankers are creatures of The Blob, which protects them from competition. They look like private institutions but they only exist at the pleasure of the regulators. And our western democracies make sure it’s hard for new competitors to get a license (we must protect the racket). We wouldn’t want any upstart bankers to get off the ground who’d like to loan to Big Oil and Big Coal and proudly so.
So it is somehow very fitting, if not frighteningly so, that the Bankers became the enforcement arm of laws written in Paris, and not necessarily in Parliament.
Let us not forget the bankers role in our current predicament. Make them squirm…
Thanks to Matt Canavan and the National Party who are trying to do that:
Banks must dump Environmental, Social, and Governance ‘woke’ agenda for coal, gas, and oil
The Nationals are calling for a major shakeup of Australian banks, following revelations that energy-lending policies have been destroying investment in coal, gas, and oil.
Leader Matt Canavan said The Nationals had written to the four major banks, expressing concern that a businessman was denied even a bank account after he tried to build a diesel refinery in Gladstone.
“Now, with the benefit of hindsight and our current oil crisis, I am sure Australia would be a lot better off today, had we provided support for someone who had planned to build a refinery in 2018,” Senator Canavan said. “But we need to dump all of this Environmental, Social and Governance agenda because it is now clear that ESG stands for Extreme Shortages Guaranteed.