Editorial: 1929 again?
The Banks are going down like ninepins. It’s just over a year ago that
Northern Rock went bust. That was the first time we heard of the
‘credit crunch’ – the fact that banks were nervous of lending to each
other. Why? Because they realised the whole financial system was stood
on an unstable house of cards of credit. The pyramid had been built up
over years of mad speculation. They had got to the stage where they did
not know which bits of coloured paper in their vaults were sound and
which were non-performing toxins.
New Pamphlet available: World Capitalism in Crisis
In this new document Alan Woods outlines the real reasons for the
world financial crisis, what it means for us – and them – and what can
be done about it. He shows how Marxism both predicted the chaos which
has hit the money market and revealed the processes which caused it. He
warns that Capitalism will seek to find a way out at our expense – as
one talk show host put it; "When we mess up, we pay. When they mess up,
we pay!"
Hands Off Venezuela at Leeds Freshers’ Fair
Supporters of Hands off Venezuela at Leeds
University intervened during the week long freshers’ fair at Leeds University
Union to promote solidarity between students here in Leeds and the workers and
youth in Venezuela who are struggling to create a new society based on
socialist principles. There was a great deal of interest in the university’s
HOV society and the programme of events that the comrades have lined up. The
society managed to sign up 13 members and collected more than 50 contact details
as well as selling books, pamphlets and HOV magazines.
Boris and the bankers
Boris Johnson defends capitalism.
“Go on.
Admit it. You don’t feel altogether sorry for those bankers, do you? When you
read about the collapsing pillars of the temples of mammon, you don’t feel the
tears beginning to prick the corner of your eyes.
“When you
read that the masters and mistresses of the Universe are being expelled from
their glass palaces, ferrying their possessions in cardboard boxes, you can’t
quite find it in you, somehow, to mourn…”
Paulson plan – a kick in the face for capital
What a kick in the face for America’s
capitalist elite! The US House of
Representatives voted to reject the Emergency Economic Stabilisation Act put
forward by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, President
Bush, Vice-President Cheney, the majority Democrat leader of the House, the
Republican minority leader of the House, both candidates in the upcoming
presidential election, Barack Obama and John McCain and all the American media.
Tube – Stop bullying and victimisation
AROUND 2,500 Tube infrastructure workers at
Metronet are to be balloted for industrial action over breakdowns in industrial
relations following the victimisation of an RMT safety rep, dangerous plans to
reduce signals maintenance and attempts to impose rosters.
The
safety rep is Andy Littlechild. “Andy Littlechild has been fitted up on a bogus charge
that would embarrass the Spanish Inquisition, and to add insult to injury he
was thrown out of his depot at 3am with no means of getting home,” RMT general
secretary Bob Crow commented.
At the sharp end of the crisis – homelessness and poverty in the US
Our
lives, those of our children, our health and living are subjected to the whims
of the gambling table, otherwise known as the ‘world financial system’. In what
way can betting on the prices of stock and shares benefit humankind? Rather, it
inevitably leads, at some stage, to crisis, as the blind bets get called in.
Now,
with the crisis of the capitalist system unfolding, the poverty, hunger and
homelessness experienced by some sections of working class people is spreading
to wider and wider layers. This is initially being expressed in foreclosures on
home loans and an increase in homelessness.
World capitalism in crisis
We live in exceptional times. The financial panic in the USA is
creating waves that are threatening to engulf the whole world. This is rapidly
transforming the consciousness of millions. Alan Woods
looks at how the world economy reached the stage it has, where it is on the
brink of a serious downward, so serious that it could be as worse if not worse
than 1929.
Bradford & Bingley nationalised – let’s take the rest
Bradford
& Bingley has finally been put out of its misery. After months of
cliff-hanging the government has been forced to nationalise the bank. In
many respects the ‘rescue’ plan is a clone of the $700bn Paulson plan being
pushed through in the USA. The basic idea is that the good stuff is sold off to
the private sector while the taxpayer is lumbered with the bad debts, the
toxins. Socialism for the rich and the rigours of free enterprise for the rest
of us!
Audio File: 1929 World Crash – Can it happen again?
Yesterday Socialist Appeal editor Mick Brooks spoke to an audience of
40 at the ULU Marxist Society in London. Mick outlined the major
developments of the economy in the last five years. He explained the
reasons for the credit crunch and the collapse of major banks in the
last few weeks.
Labour Party Conference – fiddling while Rome burns
Labour is in electoral meltdown. The
newspaper headlines are screaming ‘We’re all doomed’ on account of the world
economic crisis. But they were desperately trying not to allow the real world
to impinge on the surreal world inside Labour Party Conference.
“The weirdest conference I’ve ever attended,”
so said one experienced political commentator in reviewing this year’s Labour
Party conference in Manchester. With Labour trailing badly in the opinion polls
and having faced a series of bad to awful results in successive by elections,
local council elections and the London Mayoral election, you might have
expected the mood to be depressed and flat. And so for most it was.