World stock markets are still reeling from yet another shock to the
system brought on by the so-called credit crunch that has enveloped capitalist
financial markets since last summer. The latest shock was the biggest yet. Late on Sunday night, 16 March, the US
Federal Reserve Bank announced that Bear Stearns, America’s fifth-largest investment
bank, was bust.

Now Gordon Brown has handed over the reins as Chancellor to
Alistair Darling it transpires that for the past ten years Gordon has been
displaying the fiscal prudence of a drunken sailor. The British government has
the biggest hole in their finances in Europe, a whopping £43bn – and it could
get up to £50bn. Where has it all gone?

This article was originally written on the occasion of the seventieth
anniversary of the 1929 Wall
Street Crash. It was not intended purely as a
commemorative or historical piece. It was written because, to Marxists, all the
signs were then apparent that another stock price ‘correction’ was in
preparation.

Republication of the article is timely. In 2007 the sub-prime mortgage bubble
finally burst. The financial crisis has already had a knock-on effect on the
banks through the credit crunch. The capitalist world stands on the threshold
of recession.