Swan should have gone in harder. As I predicted a day or two ago, the ANZ yesterday followed the NAB’s lead and went one step further than their bigger rival (NAB increased its rate by 0.12%). What Wayne doesn’t seem to understand though, is that if he had come down harder on the NAB, I very much doubt the ANZ would have had the gall to put their rates up by nearly twice as much. Swan has let the tiger out of the cage and what he’s said today falls under the category of ‘too little, too late’. Alpine Opinion

Make the switch? Not so easy. The Treasurer has publicly admonished ANZ over its larger than expected interest rate rise. He urged customers to switch. That is all very well but how is easy is it to switch? And does it make a difference anyway? Economics.com.au

Swan an interventionist leftie. Outside, all soft and economically conservative, but scratch the surface and an iron-fisted, interventionist leftie comes mewling into the light, coupled with an admission that he actually doesn’t have the foggiest notion what effect the US subprime crisis is actually having. Drooble

Stop mixing business with politics. Of course the credit crunch caused by the Subprime meltdown is affecting Australian banks, but to question a private company for the way it handles its money is appealing only to uninformed populists or ideological communists. If the ANZ is doing the nasty, then let people go right ahead and use other banks and financial institutions instead. That’s how a market economy works. One Salient Oversight

Old promises, new beginnings. Of late, it has been noticed by various research groups that Banks are falling way behind in their promises to upkeep customer satisfaction and to consistently thrive to offer competitive interest rates on their loans. As a result, more and more people are turning towards newer and non-traditional forms of accessing capital such as non-bank lenders and now social lending or peer to peer lending networks. Business