hi chris

the point that pericles and the other critics miss is: to who the loans were made available.

I'll subscribe to you mag, tomorrow.

I have no investment in Westpac or NAB and am turning everything else to gold again.

It seems unlikely that a $1.5 billion loss would send NAB or Westpac 'belly up', given that's equal to their quarterly profit. It seems more likely that they were taking advantage of once in a lifetime credit terms, and that the other banks were silly not to. It also seems like this article is complete nonsense and the author has no idea what they're talking about, despite all the talk of a secret cover up and the apparent discovery of the greatest conspiracy since the JFK assassination.

One more 'startling revelation', the Sydney Morning Herald managed to 'expose' the cover up on the 3rd of December (3 days before Kris's article), found on their website here:

http://www.smh.com.au/business/nab-westpac-tapped-fed-20101202-18i58.html

They naturally took a more objective approach to the information, explaining that NAB and Westpac were the only two Aussie banks that "took advantage of the funding window opened by the Fed", and took the time to contrast these loans with the truly troubled US banks like Citibank, which took an astonishing $1.8 trillion in loans over the period in question.