THE governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, yesterday told The Guardian newspaper that the Bank is watching developments in the ongoing war being waged by the Israeli regime in the Middle East region ‘extremely closely’.
Bailey said that: ‘Geopolitical concerns are very serious. It’s tragic what is going on. There are obvious stresses and the real issue then is how they might interact with some still quite stretched markets in places.’
Bailey clearly regards the killing of over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza and over 1,000 killed in Lebanon this week as ‘tragic’ but his main concern is the impact imperialist war will have on the crumbling economies of the West.
Bailey noted that since Israel started its genocidal war in Gaza, now extended to Lebanon, oil prices have remained steady but this he fears could be about to dramatically change as the situation spirals out of the control of US imperialism and its Zionist attack dog.
Although Bailey claims a ‘strong commitment’ from the capitalist financial world to ‘keep the market stable’ there is he said ‘also a recognition that there’s a point beyond which that control could break down if things got really bad’ adding ‘it could all go wrong’.
It has already ‘gone wrong’ for the US and its allies which clearly believed that publicly issuing meaningless calls for de-escalation while at the same time arming and financing the Israeli occupiers and giving the green light to the latest bombing and ground invasion of Lebanon would be sufficient to return the oil rich region back to the stranglehold of imperialism.
On the contrary, all the money and weapons supplied by the US have failed to crush the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, or scared Hezbollah, Yemen and Iran into ending support for the Palestinian revolution, or established an Israeli military invincibility.
Despite all the boasting that the massive Iranian missile attack this week was completely thwarted by Israel’s defence system, it is now being reported that Israel has been forced to shut military installations and prevent the publication of reports on the impact of the Iranian attack.
The capitalist markets and central banks have until now paid little attention to the mass genocide being committed by Israel but, as Bailey indicates, this is changing fast with the realisation that world capitalism cannot rely on controlling the Middle East through its Israeli guard dog.
The response of Bank of England governor Bailey was to suggest that the Bank could turn ‘a bit more activist’ on interest rates, given the geopolitical risks, by slashing interest rates in an attempt to survive another dive into an out of control inflationary spiral.
A return to the days of near zero interest rates would stabilise the debts that are keeping corporations and companies from collapse.
The prospect of a debt fuelled crisis in the weak UK economy, bringing it crashing down has got the central banks and money markets running scared.
World capitalism is in its most advanced and acute crisis ever. It is economically bankrupt and surviving only through a massive mountain of debt.
Meanwhile, it tries to stagger on by imposing its crisis onto the backs of workers at home, while attempting to re-dominate the world through launching wars of extermination and conquest.
In its final death agony imperialism is striking out at the working class and masses of the world. The time has come to put it out of its misery.
The Hamas revolutionary leadership this week called for a weekend of mass marches and solidarity events across the world on the anniversary of the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle that marked the rising up of the Palestinians against Zionist occupation and demonstrated the military frailty of Israel and its backers.
The Palestinian revolution that is delivering massive blows to world imperialism is supported by tens of millions of workers and youth across the US, UK and Europe – as demonstrated by last Friday’s general strike in Spain calling for an immediate ceasefire and an end to arming Israel.
The working class internationally must answer the Hamas call and go forward to calling indefinite general strikes to bring down their capitalist governments replacing them with workers governments and socialism.
Fighting for the victory of the world socialist revolution is the only way forward. There is not a moment to lose. Sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International must now be built in every country to consign capitalism to the dustbin of history!
