YESTERDAY afternoon Barack Obama was in discussion with his economic advisers and with his allies as the crisis of US imperialism intensified on the back of Thursday’s 430 point crash on Wall Street, making for a 10 per cent share price loss in just two days.
With just over 70 days to go before he becomes president, the US jobless rate rose to 6.5% in October, with the US employers cutting 240,000 jobs in the month. The increase means that already in the first 10 months of this year, 1.2 million workers in the US have lost their jobs.
As well Ford, one of the US ‘Big Three’ carmakers announced ten per cent job cuts, after third quarter losses of $129m.
Obama has already made his first appointment taking on the arch-Zionist Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, an appointment that has echoed all round the Middle East and the Gulf.
On Friday he had a meeting to discuss his strategy for the crisis with his running-mate, Joseph Biden, and a team of economic advisers including the over 80 years old ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker, the Clinton-era Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers, and his predecessor, Robert Rubin. In phone attendance were Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and billionaire investor, Warren Buffet.
With a massively indebted banking system, a motor car industry that is facing wipeout, and a federal government deficit that is poised to go over $1 trillion there is no way that Obama can spend his way out of the crisis, or give way to the wages, health, pensions and jobs demands of the very angry US working class, whose trade union organisations played the major role in putting him into the presidency, but were not represented at the gathering.
The strategic initiative was no doubt taken by his chief of staff Emanuel. His motto is ‘You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid. . . In 1974 and 1978 we never dealt with it, and our dependence on foreign oil never changed.’
Obama is going to be driven by the worsening economic crisis and the US bourgeoisie that he represents to take on the working class at home by resisting its major demands and building up a cheap labour economy, while abroad he seeks to grab priceless resources through imperialist war.
In fact, as far as he is concerned, George Bush did not do enough to crush the Taleban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and he insists that thousands more US and British troops must be sent to do battle in these countries.
Yesterday news emerged of a US missile attack inside Pakistan when a village was hit by four US missiles and 13 people were killed.
Obama supports this policy and wants it strengthened.
On Monday, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari warned the new US commander for Iraq and Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, that the attacks were ‘counterproductive’ and could harm the battle for hearts and minds here.
However Petraeus is determined that there will be a US and UK surge in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and has the support of Obama for this policy.
There is no doubt that Obama and his gang of Republican and Democratic advisers are planning to leap straight into action, at home and abroad, to defend the interests of US capitalism, the moment he becomes president.
This onslaught will cause enormous shock waves throughout the United States and the Middle East and Central Asia.
The plain facts are that US capitalism and world capitalism are in their death agony, and that the only way the life of the world capitalist system can be prolonged is through the most rapacious attacks on the working class and the poor of the world.
Faced with these attacks, the US working class will be forced to break with the Democrats and found a Labour party to defend its vital interests.
That defence will be a revolutionary one and will require a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International to lead it forward to the victorious socialist revolution.
