There are many lessons that MUST be learnt but if there is ONE blatently obvious lesson to be learnt out of this financial fiasco is that Banks or to be accurate Bankers cannot be trusted to self regulate themselves, they are after all human (I think), this is akin to puting a rat in charge of the cheese cellar & telling it NOT to touch. The sooner our moronic leaders admit they stuffed up & acknowledge Australia needs a Peoples Bank such as the Commonwealth was, that "inspires" private banks to follow their lead as to remain competitive the sooner both individuals & small business will have some slim hope of NOT being bullied by these greedy self serving bankers, essentially a ban on ALL political donations by financial institutions MUST also be implemented with this as they have been allowed to accumulate far too much power & bought far too many favors they want to be repaid to expect anything but corruption. It is now apparent that ALL sides of Politics want to either privatise everything & allow open slather self regulation in whatever area they're allowed to before THE PEOPLE say enough is enough, something that should have been done years ago. Naturally this would mean Politicians as a whole could deny ANY little responsibility they have left now for whatever goes wrong PLUS leave them a lot freer to persue their own personal agendas which is unfortunately the reason many are attracted to politics now, where else can one receive the overall package they enjoy for virtually NO accountability or responsibility ? What better time than now for this to begin with the ALP in power in Canberra, as they were the ones who sold the Commonwealth Bank, so much for the so-called workers political party, such an act of betrayal & abandonment is rarely witnessed in Australia & unfortunately I must admit that I did vote for them however in my defence their intentions were unbeknown to me. We, as voters & Australians are responsible for this ransom we now find ourselves under because we have allowed our Politicians to do whatever they want & to become enablers for the financial institutions. If there is enough pressure generated by enough of us in society demanding our political representatives undergo reform, actually Govern what they're supposed to & tell Banks that they too are part of society will obligations, they will have little option but to comply. Until this occurs don't expect anything but more arrogance, greed & deceipt, the apathy shown by many Australians if NOT changed WILL be the cause of ALL our demise. Think about it ! My best wishes to you all.