Tag: banks

‘IT seems to me that bank workers are treated as second-class citizens as though their jobs don’t matter.’ This is what Ged Nichols, general secretary...

Responding to yesterday’s unemployment figures, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: ‘Today’s figures show that unemployment is starting to accelerate and it now...

THE Federal Reserve Bank’s $85bn ‘rescue’ of AIG was carried out to stave off an immediate international financial and business collapse. It has turned...

QUEUES formed around the Singapore offices of an AIG subsidiary yesterday, as the world’s biggest insurance company collapsed, losing 70% of its share price. At...

SHARE price collapses continued yesterday after the bankrupting of the fourth largest US investment bank, Lehman Brothers, and the ‘rescue’ of Merrill Lynch by...

Wall Street shares fell 2.4% when trading opened in New York yesterday, in the midst of the financial turmoil caused by the bankruptcy of...

LEHMAN Brothers and Merrill Lynch, two pillars of the capitalist world’s banking system, have gone. The first declared bankruptcy, after the US Federal Reserve...

TONY Woodley, the Unite joint general secretary, has stepped into the row over the demand for a Labour Party leadership debate and a leadership...

PM Brown has rejected out of hand the trade union demand for a Windfall Tax on the oil, gas and energy companies, that are...

THE European Commission stated yesterday that the UK, Germany and Spain, key members of the EU, with Germany being the world’s biggest exporter, are...

ADDRESSING the bosses of the Scottish CBI, Prime Minister Gordon Brown assured them that his government will not be giving workers, the poor and...

THE Bank of England (BoE) Monetary Policy Committee decided yesterday to make no change in its base interest rate and to leave it at...

The Brown government has so far this year handed over more than £200bn to cash-strapped banks, it was claimed by a leading Swiss banker...

THE pound fell to an exchange rate of $1.77 yesterday, its lowest level for two-and-a-half years. In June sterling was trading at $2, but...

In a bid to prop up the banks and construction industry, prime minister Brown and chancellor Darling yesterday promoted a £1.6bn housing rescue package. This...

YESTERDAY’S reports on the state of the economy reveal more about the catastrophe gripping British capitalism, part of the world crisis. • The Bank of...

AVERAGE house prices in Britain are now 10.5 per cent lower than they were a year ago, according to figures published yesterday by Nationwide,...

‘The TUC leaders must act to defend jobs or make way for those who will,’ Dave Wiltshire, national secretary of the All Trades Union...

THE new Deputy Governor of the Bank of England (BoE), Charles Bean said yesterday that when the so-called ‘credit crunch’ began last August central...

UK economic growth ground to a halt between April and June, according to the latest official data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS)...

‘If there is no movement then we will have to look to further action in the near future,’ UNISON Scottish Secretary Matt Smith told...

SPEAKING at a finance conference in Singapore yesterday, former IMF chief economist Ken Rogoff woke up slumbering listeners when he predicted: ...

BANK of England governor King’s report, on the immediate prospects for British capitalism has produced a run on the pound – so precarious is...

IF NICE and the ‘NHS health reformers’ have their way, free health care at the point of need is destined for the dustbin of...

THE correct intervention of the Russian army to defend the people of South Ossetia against the onslaught of the Georgian army has initially been...

The Royal Bank of Scotland yesterday revealed a half-year net loss of £802 million, the second biggest in British banking history. This was after...

LABOUR MP Bob Marshall Andrews, recently called the Labour Foreign Secretary David Miliband a ‘duplicitous traitor’, after Miliband published an article in the Guardian...

ROYAL MAIL, acting on its brief from the government has announced the closure of major automated sorting centres which will affect Liverpool. Oldham, Bolton,...

THE Northern Rock bank, recently nationalised by the government has made a £585m loss for the first six months of the year, but the...

The government is to inject another £3bn into Northern Rock, Chancellor Darling said yesterday. As the nationalised bank announced a loss of £585.4m in the...

THE HSBC bank has just declared a 28 per cent, $3.9bn fall in half year profits. It has written off another $3.7 billion...

JUST a few months ago the UNISON leadership accepted the government’s below inflation wage cutting deal over three years. Now the union has had...

THE Labour party and the trade unions released a joint statement from the Warwick policy conference yesterday. This revealed why the Prime Minister was able...

AFTER the Labour party defeat at Glasgow East, one of the safest Labour seats in the country, the Prime Minister Gordon Brown has stated...

INCAPACITY Benefit will be abolished under the Welfare Green Paper just published by Works and Pensions Minister, James Purnell. The 2.7 million people receiving Incapacity...

CHANCELLOR Darling has told his cabinet colleagues there will be no more money made available for schools, hospitals or transport. These vital services face cuts,...

ENERGY bills will rise by more than 60% within the next few years, a report for the UK’s biggest domestic energy supplier Centrica said...

TODAY 800,000 local council workers, members of the UNISON and UNITE trade unions, begin a two-day strike against a government-imposed wage cut, an offer...

THE capitalist state has had to admit that its war on two fronts means that it cannot rely on the British army for strike...

THE reaction of the Brown government to the eruption of the capitalist crisis has been to champion the interests of the banks, pledging to...

THE British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) quarterly report has just discovered a situation that every worker and every shopper has been acquainted with for...

Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday gave a fitting reply to all those trade union bureaucrats who were saying that he could be forced to...

TEXAS PACIFIC GROUP’S decision to cut and run, taking with it the £179 million that was to be used to buy 23 per cent...

The price of oil continued to soar yesterday, with Brent crude rising above $146 per barrel (p.b.) for the first time ever. Brent crude...

KING Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, whose nation is the world’s number one oil exporter, called on consumer countries to get used to high prices...