Posted: 6.49pm Tuesday 20 January 2009
News
Take the banks from the bosses
No more public money without public control
As economic recession tears into Britain, millions of us spend our nights fearing for the future. More than half of all workers are worried that they might be on the dole by the end of the year.
Despite this, Gordon Brown has made it clear that working people are not his priority.
The government will not be offering us any chances to have our debts cleared. Instead it is the bankers who are again to benefit from Brown’s charity.
This week the government offered guarantees of up to £200 billion to lenders who think their debts will not be repaid.
Brown hopes this will encourage the banks to lend more money to people and businesses.
But there are no guarantees that his plan will work. Even as the government announced its plans the largely state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland lost 70 percent of its value.
Brown’s latest handout follows last year’s £287 billion cash injection – the “radical” action that was supposed to put an end to the banking crisis. Yet even after receiving such sums, the banks continued to refuse to lend on the scale the government had hoped for.
Bank bosses insist that they must be allowed to run “their” businesses without interference, even as they suck up more public money.
Yet this will lead to a deepening of the crisis. Instead, Brown should replace the directors of all the banks that have taken public money with representatives who are accountable to the public.
At the very least the government could insist on an end to the threat of home repossession and debt collectors. Doing so would mean we get something in return for billions of pounds of our money.
The following should be read alongside this article:
» World rulers panic as banks’ crisis returns
» Gordon Brown throws more money into growing banking black hole
» A bank worker speaks out
» Bailout will mean cuts
© Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.
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