The regulators who are supposed to stop the abuses that can result are not always up to the job. 监管者本应阻止可能产生后果的滥用，但他们总不能胜任这份工作。

　　But when wrongdoing does finally come to light, the penalties can be vast. 但当公司罪状最终大白天下的时候，处罚就非常巨大。

　　Financial institutions in Britain have had to lay aside 40bn pounds ($52bn) to compensate customers mis-sold payment protection insurance. 英国金融机构需要放弃400亿英镑（520亿美元）用于赔偿错卖客户的支付保护险。

　　Wells Fargo was fined $1bn by American regulators and ordered to reimburse the people to whom it had sold useless insurance or mortgages with inflated fees. 美国监管部门对富国银行罚款10亿美元并要求赔偿那些被银行推销购买无用保险或有通货膨胀费的抵押贷款的客户。

　　Now it is the turn of Australian banks to face a reckoning. 现在轮到澳大利亚银行面临审判了。

　　A royal commission has exposed a litany of abuses. 一所皇家调查委员会曝光了一大串滥用罪责。

　　Its interim report, published on September 28th, paints the country's financial institutions as consumer-crushing oligopolies. 其9月28日发布的中期报告将国家金融机构描绘成压榨消费者的寡头。

　　Lenders charged hidden fees long after providing services, and for some services they never provided at all, on occasion to people who were dead. 在提供服务后，贷方收取隐藏费用，有时还会对那些根本没有提供的服务收取费用，有时还把这招用在已去世人身上。

　　They siphoned off at least A$1bn ($720m) of compulsory pension savings in excessive charges. 在额外收费中，他们至少对强制养老金储蓄收取了10亿澳元（7.2亿美元）的费用。

　　And they offered mortgages that they should have known were far too expensive to afford. 而且他们还提供抵押贷款，他们本应该知道这种贷款太过昂贵，客户支付不起。

　　Their behaviour, said Kenneth Hayne, the head of the inquiry, was not just immoral, but criminal. 他们的行为，负责该调查的肯尼思·海恩称，不仅是不道德的，更是犯罪。

　　The banks have tried to pin the blame on a few rogue staff. In fact the wrongdoing was pervasive—and turbo-charged by government policy. 银行想要把责任归咎于几名流氓员工。事实上，这种犯罪行为很普遍—并且是由国家政策所导致的。

　　Until relatively recently few Australians sought financial advice. But the introduction of compulsory private pensions in the 1990s gave them savings to invest. 直到最近几名没什么澳大利亚人寻求理财建议了。但是20世纪90年代强制私人退休金的引入给了他们用于投资的存款。

　　At A$2.6trn, Australia's superannuation pot is now one of the world's largest. It has sustained a swelling wealth-management industry. 澳大利亚2600亿澳元的退休金罐现在是全球最大之一。这笔退休金维持了一个膨胀的财务管理工业。

　　The inquiry levelled sharp criticisms at outsized commissions. 在庞大的佣金面前，调查等同于尖锐的批评。

　　These, it found, had encouraged financial advisers to direct customers' savings towards high-cost, 调查发现，这些佣金激励着财务顾问将客户存款引入高成本

　　poorly performing funds and insurance providers to sell policies that would never pay out. 表现糟糕的基金，并激励着保险供应商推销那些根本不会有赔付款的保险。