APRA goes to NIDA – send in the clowns

by Dr. Andrew D. Schmulow

The Sydney Morning Herald, 26 March 2019.

The ABC has reported that our bank regulator, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, has contracted NIDA to teach its staff “presentation skills” – effectively acting lessons – to the tune of $430,000. Theatre patrons and merchant bankers are up in arms. Sure APRA is in some sort of glittering death spiral. But surely the blame for this is that a bunch of do-gooders have lined-up to kick APRA while it was trying to stay out of everyone’s way (well, everyone who’s a shyster). The kicking has been delivered by the Royal Commission (APRA doesn’t understand the law, much less enforce it), the Productivity Commission (APRA has been running a protection racket for the big four banks) and the IMF (APRA collects voluminous amounts of data, most of it useless).

Also published in The Age.