Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor After a week of turmoil on financial markets, on Saturday 20 September President Bush said he was proposing to spend $700bn of taxpayers’ money to buy the rotten mortgage assets held by the banks on Wall Street. He said he was doing this to help the average American family with their homes and jobs.
Financial meltdown deepens Financial markets in Wall Street, New York, the City of London and all over are in turmoil. In just 24 hours, two out of the four largest investment banks in the US have disappeared. All this confirms what Marxists have always maintained: capitalism does not operate in a smooth and steadily increasing way to progress. It operates violently, lopsidedly, in cycles of boom and slump. Now more banks are set to fail and there will be more misery in the financial markets. Working people are also set to suffer as massive job losses are announced.
The credit crunch – one year on Written in August, one year after the beginning of the credit crunch, this article explains how that earthquake in the global financial system has left banks, insurers, pension and municipal funds, hedge funds and private equity companies tottering and falling. Collateral damage has been immense and the after-shocks are still to come.
