Since the huge RBS and Lloyds-HBOS losses in February, yet more mind-boggling amounts have been splashed out on the failed capitalist money machine, out of public funds.
This time, the 2 banking giants have been awarded a bounty of about £60bn. In addition, Brown will cover 85% of any loss on £600bn worth of loans by these banks - almost equivalent to the government's entire annual budget!
Finally, under the magical wand of "quantitative easing", Brown launched a money printing spree, which will put up to £150bn into the City's coffers.
THE WHOLE CAPITALIST CLASS IS ON THE MAKE
The banks' bailouts were always designed to rescue the system as a whole. But so far, with the exception of measures such as the car industry's package, public funds were only handed out to the banks as an "encouragement" to resume lending.
Except that this did not happen. Instead, the banks hoarded the cash, when they did not use it in profitable speculation and acquisitions. As a result, big business has been clamouring loudly against the high credit costs it has had to face. So, Brown is now obligingly throwing more public funds at the system, using wider-ranging measures.
His guarantee concerns mainly loans to companies, especially the largest. So that the biggest sharks will be able to renegotiate their loans and, possibly, get new, cheaper ones. And if, at some point, they want to shake off their debt, they will always be able to use the bankruptcy law and get taxpayers to foot the bill for them! In short, this is not just a subsidy to the banks, it is a subsidy to all big companies. Contrary to Darling's claims, it is unlikely to relax lending to house buyers or small businesses. After all, as he himself insists, the state-controlled banks are "commercial" outfits which will pick and choose those borrowers who are in the best position to generate profits despite the crisis - meaning the richest!
As to Darling's "quantitative easing", this is nothing but a mechanism to distribute newly-printed money (albeit electronic cash) to existing owners of government bonds. Apart from boosting instantly the market price of these bonds, thereby offering new profits to all kinds of speculators, this will benefit big financial institutions far beyond the banking system, especially insurance companies. But for working people, this is just another huge figure which is being added to the bill that they will be expected to foot!
WE NEED WORKERS' CONTROL!
It takes mad doctors and mad medicines to try to preserve at all costs, a failed system. But this is exactly what this government is doing.
Flooding the City with hundreds of billions of public funds may lead to frantic efforts by the profit sharks to cover their own losses. But how can it benefit the overwhelming working class majority, which is at the receiving end of the crisis?
The talk about "helping" households faced with repossession was only hot air. And while tens of thousands of building workers were pushed onto the dole, nothing was done to meet the drastic need for new affordable housing for rent. Nor have Brown's bailouts reduced, let alone stopped, job cuts. Quite the opposite! How many companies, including the state-controlled banks, are now using public money to fund redundancy plans? Not to mention the government's own cuts planned in organisations such as Royal Mail!
Out of respect for capital, Brown chooses not to use his control over most of the country's big banks to stop their criminal profiteering. Worse even, the new Banking Act which came into force last month, gives the Bank of England (and, in fact, ministers) new powers to secretly inject public funds into private coffers. Commercial secrecy is now compounded by "official secrecy"!
Yet, against the bankruptcy of the financial system caused by its own profiteering, the only effective response would be to merge the failed banks into one single state bank, to be used on a non-profit basis to allocate the funds necessary to cater for the needs of the majority, rather than the greed of the sharks who caused the crisis.
Of course, such a response would also require that all secrecy be lifted and that the working population takes upon itself the task to ensure that resources are allocated according to the collective interests of the majority. A tall order? Maybe, but far less costly than the disaster that the capitalists and their politicians are cooking up for us!