Talk about blackmail. Back in October we gave the banksters $700 billion to re-capitalize them in an effort to coax them to lend. This saved them and the free market system from collapse. But this historic crisis deepens. The banksters took the money but won’t lend it out. It’s absurd enough that the capitalist politicians would lend our money to their banker friends at low rates so they could lend it back to us at higher rates, but they took the money and are either hoarding it or using it to buy other banks.
Imagine lending an individual some money so they could lend it back to you with interest.
The banksters and their politicians are terrorizing society; they are terrorists. They are refusing to throw money in to circulation, to lend money in order that businesses can function and workers can buy things. Why is this?
A major problem is that they have all these bad loans on the books that they can’t sell because they’re worthless. “Banks are not lending but are hoarding capital in readiness to absorb losses from existing bad loans and securities” today’s Financial Times editorial informs us. They won’t release capital until something is done with these. There is also another problem; all their brilliant economists have no idea how long this will last or where further crisis will emerge.
They know they are now in a second phase of crisis. The articles in today’s Financial Times all reveal the gloom and concern they have that the very existence of their system could be threatened. Here is a sampling:
Saving The Banks FT
Big losses intensify turmoil for Banks FT
Financial turmoil calls for more effective intervention: FT
Big Firms Deepen Job, Wage Cuts WSJ
Citi Logs Loss
So further concessions to the banks are in the works. Their politicians are now offering to buy these bad loans that they can’t sell using our money. They are also offering to insure loans so that investors will feel more confident that if they invest, the capital and profits on capital will be guaranteed by the taxpayer.
As I read all this I am reminded of the right wingers I have had to deal with at work or in my social life, workers who attack the poor and those on welfare for being a burden on the taxpayer. The cost of subsiding poor people, preventing them from starving to death really, is miniscule when compared to the handouts the capitalist class has received over the last six months. Their ideological heroes, the Michael Savages and Rush Limbaugh’s are enemies of working people, bigots and racists that are media pimps for the corporations.
With the losses at Citi and BofA and now the same crisis at Merrill Lynch and Barclays, the strategists of capital are now convinced that they will have to have a full nationalization of the banks in order to save the system from collapse. The Irish government nationalized the Anglo-Irish Bank last Thursday.
Workers should also recognize we are in a new phase of this crisis and prepare ourselves for it. GE is eliminating 11,000 jobs. “Big Firms Deepen Job, Wage Cuts” warns today’s Wall Street Journal. The auto bailout will be linked to massive job losses and plant closures.
Facts For Working People rejects this blackmail by the banksters who are in possession of our wealth. We also support the nationalization of the banks but not in the same way. They are nationalizing them in order that their government can best save the system and their profits at our expense. We call for the nationalization of the banking system under workers control and management.
Instead of federal reserve chiefs and their economists and politicians, a centralized national bank would be under the control of democratically elected representatives from working class communities and our organizations. Small business would also have democratically elected representatives on such committee(s) as well as experts from the field of economics but the dominant and controlling element would be from the working class, the majority of us.
Nationalizing the banks and creating a national bank through which monies could be distributed in society would not mean nationalizing bank deposits except those of the big speculators and corporations. The savings of workers and the middle class are their means of subsistence and would not be taken. I am sure most workers would agree with this. In this way, the resources we have would be dispensed in a rational planned way for the good of all as opposed for profit taking.
They will be coming after us more aggressively up ahead as this second phase of the crisis takes effect. President elect Obama is also increasing the investment (human and material) in an Afghan war that, like Iraq, cannot be won.
The capitalist class are bankrupt, the market has failed and is being dragged from the edge of the abyss by their politicians who the vast majority of us trusted (many unwittingly and without seeing an alternative) with the levers of society. The leadership of workers’ organizations assist them in saving capitalism from itself.
The events of the past 6 months reveal clearly that they have abrogated their right to rule. It’s our turn now; the majority of us who make it all work.
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