Australian mentality: "We need to cut costs so we can maintain...

Australian mentality: "We need to cut costs so we can maintain the dividend."

American mentality: "We need to grow revenue so we can grow our dividend."

Investing in Australian banks, bar CBA and Macquarie is a fool's game.

This bank (Westpac) is so bad, so awful, that it hasn't hit an ATH in about 7 years. In fact, it's trading at where it did in the mid-2007s, all while failing to provide shareholders a stable income.

Anyone who decides to invest in Westpac is just making an awful, awful decision and losing sight of the big picture to get a few "frankies" in the bag. I hope that mirage of that big fat juicy divvy doesn't detract you from an investment that will win in the longer term.

An awful, awful investment, and today's announcement is a culmination of Westpac's failure in investing in its business and so the easy and cheap answer for this cheap and third-tier and uninspiring, visionless management team is to cut costs so they can meet their targets and get paid bonuses.

Westpac


CBA

Royal Bank of Canada


JP Morgan Chase