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Three in four Australians hold financial institutions responsible for the current debt crisis, research by the Australia Institute revealed.
The findings of the Institute’s report, released yesterday, said that 74 per cent of survey respondents agreed that banks were too willing to lend money to people who couldn’t afford repayments.
Josh Fear, one author of the report, said the corporate sector had tended to draw on the doctrine of “personal responsibility” to absolve itself of any culpability to debt problems but that the survey’s results pointed to a very different community belief.
“Our research... suggests that many ordinary Australians hold the corporate sector responsible for the debt problem and believe that financial institutions have... gone too far in promoting the easy availability of credit,” Mr Fear said.
The Institute made a number of recommendations for improving regulation of credit, such as eliminating excessive marketing and strengthening the principle of a borrower’s ability to pay in legislation.
Published: 08-05-08
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