Investors culpable in Opes affair

It is understandable ANZ cannot be fagged pointing out the responsibility of others in the losses from the failure of Opes Prime. One reason is the bank may have to concede fault on some points. Another is that there are other things to do.

Yet by taking its losses ANZ plays one of the last scenes in the pantomime of a particular culture that skips over values, centralises blame and shirks individual responsibility.

The clowns responsible for the investment decisions that saw their holdings of the most speculative, small cap stocks lost or devalued are in every case the investors.

If investors were uninformed about methods and risks, tough. They still pay.

Complainants may make multiple civil claims of merit against ANZ, under trades practices, contract and insolvency law.

Maybe they are a corollary of a bank with weak credit controls, leaving reckless investors with somebody to sue, but that's really a fortune for those who wanted to chance their hand at high stake equity investing.

All instigated and sought out this investment option.

What was that again? Securities lending?

A practice once the domain of commodity traders of ore morphed over the centuries into a wild, unsupervised banking business - and a coda to mark the end of the Australian long boom.