Threats
to international banks are astronomical and measured in hundreds
of trillions of dollars. In recent weeks the American Federal
Reserve, has used $900 BN to buy out banks and finance
institutions. The controversial bill before the US Congress seeks a
further $700 billion on a rolling bailout to buy out bad mortgage
based stocks forming the base of the problem.
Martin
Deane, Hull Green Party, comments, “These are unprecedented
bailouts and buyouts of many banks and businesses we are seeing. And
this is just the tip of the iceberg. The buyout of Bradford &
Bingley by the UK government confirmed today just underlines
this.
"Last
week U.S. banks borrowed a record amount from the Federal Reserve, at
about $188 billion a day (Reuters).
This is international finance on life support! The American
central bank is going to extremes to keep the banking system afloat.
This is the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression and
there is a long way to go yet. Essentially all the banks are broke!
“Many
ordinary people are understandably interested in this problem. They
know all about record debt in the UK. They are very familiar with the
good and the bad of house prices. And now they are rightly
afraid they may lose their home or their business may go under. But
ordinary people also know they didn't cause this problem, " Mr
Deane continues.
"So
where is the accountability? Bankers and brokers have made widespread
mistakes built on a completely unsustainable ideology - the idea
of eternal growth - yet very few are paying any price. Who is
going to court? Who is going to jail? The highly misleading and
dangerous Bill going through America's Congress even guarantees
that the so-called Paulson Plan cannot ever be questioned – not
even in the courts!
"These
huge bailouts paid out by the "Fed" are in effect
socialism for the rich. The Paulson Plan itself is just another
example of "disaster capitalism": where you create a
disaster, or take advantage of one, and then enact laws to make you
and all your friends rich. But people don't buy it. Most people have
watched their incomes, in real terms, since Reagan and Thatcher,
actually go down while those 30 years have celebrated astonishing
riches for the few. People - and quite a number of financiers and
economists - actually want all necessary financial regulation
back in place – and they want governments that will do this.
"Yet
none of the governments are talking about this - they expect the
bailouts to work and the "market" to "correct"
itself - but they willl be lucky in the extreme. For decades
deregulation has meant more finance created out of thin air by the
banks and more and more exotic types of stocks to buy created by
financiers all on fat bonuses and commissions. It's become
Monopoly without rules. What's far more likely now is a recession
if not a full-blown depression.
"The
Green Party isn't offering you shares in companies, but we do promise
you shares in a future worth having. The Green Party has a New
Deal on the table that we have been working on in partnership for
some time. There is no time left for market games
playing with billions of lives and Earth's dwindling resources. We
have to face up to climate change and peak oil; we have to face the
decimation of nature, and we have to reboot the financial system. We
can't kid ourselves it will be ok.
"This
casino capitalism is precisely what's wrong with the system, the
triumph of presentation over substance - until it all goes horribly
wrong. The lesson from history is that we can’t buy our way out of a
major crisis. These huge bailouts are likely to lead to hyperinflation
- wheelbarrows of money to buy our bread.
"Green
finance will put the regulation back. Green finance understands
that the most vulnerable in society need a safety net. People, not
surprisingly, don’t see banks in the same way! Endless credit is not
the way forward - that way lies devaulation of currencies, increased
exploitation, home losses, business collapses, large scale
unemployment. Green finance knows that credit can quite simply be
controlled and regulated. Credit can be public not private. It can be
the state's role to create money, not the banks'. Otherwise this cycle
will only repeat itself all over again."
America
is important in all this as the world's leading economy - though
clearly not for much longer. Britain has a close relationship
financially too; it's not just the wars. Reports have it that the Bank
of England has lent out £200 BN to worried banks over the last few
months. This is emergency lending precisely because the major banks
will no longer lend to each other - because they do not know who is
going to go under next.
-------------------------
Martin
Deane
Sec,
Hull & E. Riding Green Party
471467
/ 07812 838701
Shan
Oakes
Candidate,
Yorkshire & the Humber
01482
862085
