Eight lenders, including three major banks and a couple of names rarely pinged by ASIC, may compensate borrowers dudded by dubious lending practices, mainly relating to interest only loans.Or, then again, they may not - and may not even be guilty of the shortcomings alleged, contradicting the position taken by ASIC in an announcement yesterday timed to reinforce APRA's activism on Friday on macroprudential policy.FirstMac and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank are on a list produced by ASIC which is headed by three major banks (ANZ, Commonwealth Bank and National Australia Bank) and rounded out by Pepper Group, ING Bank and Macquarie Bank.It's the third act in a performance with a macroprudential theme devised a month or so back by the Council of Financial Regulators.What does ASIC allege these eight lenders have all done wrong?ASIC said that "eight major lenders will provide remediation to consumers who suffer financial difficulty as a result of shortcomings in past lending practices."Banking Day's engagement with several of those names suggest the history does not fit ASIC's narrative.The lenders who actually end up dishing out ASIC's version of compensation may prove to be a lesser number, with a minority of the eight defamed by ASIC having, to date, paid no refunds at all and, so far, budgeting to pay none.It's mostly old hat anyway. The matters at the centre of ASIC's announcement - headlined by them as "further measures to promote responsible lending in the home loan sector" - have been the subject of little to no discussion, at least with some of the eight listed lenders in recent times.ASIC set out its material differently in any event, an Eliot Ness aimed-for but missing.The corporate watchdog's lead: that it "announced a targeted industry surveillance to examine whether lenders and mortgage brokers are inappropriately recommending more expensive interest-only loans."There it is: almost in a tabloid manner, financial regulators in Australia (including APRA) on the verge of equating a financial product with an illicit drug like ice or meth.Above all, it's the scare that's one parallel, the scientific study of the problem a burden to the storytellers.For folklorist to help launch its variant on 2017 modernist monetary policy, ASIC received help from one tabloid, the Financial Review. "ASIC's Greg Medcraft is on a mission to avoid a US sub-prime repeat", headed up an article highlighting the ASIC chief's pledge that "we want to make sure we don't have a surge in defaults when rates go up, and the misery that comes with that." Medcraft said he feared an increasing number of local borrowers were "in over their heads".ASIC's set piece material noted that "with many lenders, including major lenders, charging higher interest rates for interest-only loans compared with principal-and-interest loans, lenders and brokers must ensure that consumers are not provided with unsuitable interest-only loans."ASIC's crescendo, as explained above, rang hollow."Building on earlier work on home lending standards, ASIC is also announcing that eight major lenders will provide remediation to consumers who suffer financial difficulty as a result of