THE US Federal Reserve announced late on Wednesday the third emergency programme in two days in an increasingly desperate and futile attempt to avoid the banks and money markets crashing as the threat of a global recession has become a reality.
It will lend about $10 billion to banks to buy short-term IOUs from large businesses and other banks, in the hope this will provide the cash to keep these companies and banks from going bust as their revenues and profits collapse under the impact of the global crisis.
Like the other two emergency measures taken by the Fed, slashing interest rates to zero and restarting pumping free money into the banks via Quantitative Easing, this latest programme did nothing to stop the stock market crash.
In the past two weeks there has been a headlong dash to dump shares in order to raise cash as the speculators watch while massive companies close down and turn overnight from assets into bankrupt liabilities.
The Fed’s move to try and avert catastrophe was followed by the European Central Bank which announced that it would print 750 billion euros of new money, in what is now called ‘pandemic quantitative easing’, to try and stave off the collapse of a European economy that is not just struggling but is in the middle of a deep recession.
None of these programmes, including the Tories’ £330 billion bailout for big business announced this week, have had the slightest effect, with stock markets around the world continuing to plunge to all time lows and the Dow Jones index plummeting nearly 3,000 points, its biggest drop in history.
All these emergency measures by the central banks – pumping trillions of paper money into the banking system – have done nothing to prevent the global recession.
Major industries are simply closing down across the world and all the free money will not stop it.
In Britain the car industry has virtually shut all its assembly lines as Honda, BMW and Toyota yesterday joined the lengthening list of carmakers closing their European plants and Nissan closed its Sunderland factory, Britain’s biggest car plant, for good.
20,000 car workers in the UK have already been ‘temporarily’ laid off, and in an industry already faced with closures before the onset of coronavirus these plants will never re-open.
The response of the Unite union to this attack on workers is simply to urge the Johnson government to ‘introduce measures that will ensure that no business will go to the wall due to the coronavirus crisis’.
In a statement yesterday, Unite said that the Tories must facilitate the ‘mothballing’ or repurposing of non-essential manufacturing and allow workers and business to ‘weather the crisis so that they emerge unscathed and ready to go once it is over.’
These union leaders have more faith in capitalism than the capitalist class!
The fact is that capitalism is in an historic crisis, its death agony, drowning in debt and gripped by an industrial recession that cannot be wished away by pumping worthless paper money into the banks.
Appeals to the Tories are a reactionary diversion from the burning issue of the day, namely that this crisis has created the conditions where the class struggle will be fought out to a conclusion as workers refuse to see their lives destroyed by a bankrupt capitalist system that will throw them out of work with either no pay or, if they are lucky, the bare minimum of sick pay.
What is required today is a programme of struggle, with the unions taking action to occupy to stop factory closure and the nationalisation of industries that are collapsing.
Not a single closure must be permitted, not a single job lost or a penny cut from workers’ wages.
Workers must demand the trade unions call a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers’ government that will expropriate the bosses and bankers and carry out this policy that is essential for the working class today.
The only way forward for the working class today is to put an end to capitalism through socialist
revolution.
THE US Federal Reserve announced late on Wednesday the third emergency programme in two days in an increasingly desperate and futile attempt to avoid the banks and money markets crashing as the threat of a global recession has become a reality.
It will lend about $10 billion to banks to buy short-term IOUs from large businesses and other banks, in the hope this will provide the cash to keep these companies and banks from going bust as their revenues and profits collapse under the impact of the global crisis.
Like the other two emergency measures taken by the Fed, slashing interest rates to zero and restarting pumping free money into the banks via Quantitative Easing, this latest programme did nothing to stop the stock market crash.
In the past two weeks there has been a headlong dash to dump shares in order to raise cash as the speculators watch while massive companies close down and turn overnight from assets into bankrupt liabilities.
The Fed’s move to try and avert catastrophe was followed by the European Central Bank which announced that it would print 750 billion euros of new money, in what is now called ‘pandemic quantitative easing’, to try and stave off the collapse of a European economy that is not just struggling but is in the middle of a deep recession.
None of these programmes, including the Tories’ £330 billion bailout for big business announced this week, have had the slightest effect, with stock markets around the world continuing to plunge to all time lows and the Dow Jones index plummeting nearly 3,000 points, its biggest drop in history.
All these emergency measures by the central banks – pumping trillions of paper money into the banking system – have done nothing to prevent the global recession.
Major industries are simply closing down across the world and all the free money will not stop it.
In Britain the car industry has virtually shut all its assembly lines as Honda, BMW and Toyota yesterday joined the lengthening list of carmakers closing their European plants and Nissan closed its Sunderland factory, Britain’s biggest car plant, for good.
20,000 car workers in the UK have already been ‘temporarily’ laid off, and in an industry already faced with closures before the onset of coronavirus these plants will never re-open.
The response of the Unite union to this attack on workers is simply to urge the Johnson government to ‘introduce measures that will ensure that no business will go to the wall due to the coronavirus crisis’.
In a statement yesterday, Unite said that the Tories must facilitate the ‘mothballing’ or repurposing of non-essential manufacturing and allow workers and business to ‘weather the crisis so that they emerge unscathed and ready to go once it is over.’
These union leaders have more faith in capitalism than the capitalist class!
The fact is that capitalism is in an historic crisis, its death agony, drowning in debt and gripped by an industrial recession that cannot be wished away by pumping worthless paper money into the banks.
Appeals to the Tories are a reactionary diversion from the burning issue of the day, namely that this crisis has created the conditions where the class struggle will be fought out to a conclusion as workers refuse to see their lives destroyed by a bankrupt capitalist system that will throw them out of work with either no pay or, if they are lucky, the bare minimum of sick pay.
What is required today is a programme of struggle, with the unions taking action to occupy to stop factory closure and the nationalisation of industries that are collapsing.
Not a single closure must be permitted, not a single job lost or a penny cut from workers’ wages.
Workers must demand the trade unions call a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers’ government that will expropriate the bosses and bankers and carry out this policy that is essential for the working class today.
The only way forward for the working class today is to put an end to capitalism through socialist revolution.