Collapsing Markets and Conking Out Banks, by Andrew W. Taylor

By Andrew W Taylor

The way in which U.S. Treasury Secretary Paulson explained paying off 700 billion dollars worth of US hi-financial “toxic debt” reminded me of the whiny self-agonising of the fornicator compelled to wear a condom: “I hate the fact that we have to do this. But it is better than the alternative.”

The world’s hitherto bacchanalian bankers, complacent finance ministers and conniving corporate CEOs have been seized with panic since the fall of Lehman Brothers, one of the world’s chief investment banks. They are no longer "at ease in Sion".
Lehman’s collapse summoned up fearsome spectres for the mandarins of the world economy. Where in blazes was this going, -- toward a 1973 style-recession that ended the post WW2 capitalist boom? Or, more fearsome, towards a 1930s style global cataclysm? Or …worse…?

We hear the occasional booster-ish “expert” portend the present crisis is now over, and that the economy must just run its self-correcting crash course. This is a total nonsense, since this time round, no one knows when or how a crashing code-blue capitalism will ease off, end up, or sputter out.

As is obvious from their actions, the “G-20” leaders are hoping against hope that monster-sized infusions of tax-payers’ capital may avert the whole damn thing going down the plug hole.

However, incurring fantastic new levels of public debt at a time when the Bush-Cheney legacy has left a bill of over a trillion dollar debt is not an unambiguous ‘answer’. What is the West’s “Whence and Whither”?
Is this crisis just starting or almost over? Is it the result of a handful of greedy bankers? Will increased regulation of the Market bring us back safe into harbour – until the storm is over-passed? Formerly comfortable laissez-faire economists are openly asking if all will be well if the Nations restore the social-democratic policies of J. M. Keynes. Will all be right again if we accept the serfdom of the Mixed Economy?

Or is this crisis pointing to a fundamental failure of the Capitalist System itself, a system premised on cyclical boom and bust, on the reserve army of the unemployed, and the underemployed?. The Powers do not want people thinking deeply about political-economy in a time of crisis. The Ruling Class knows from 20th century history that over time sustained economic deprivation produces a radicalization of class-conscious citizens. And they fear us. Let us think hard and note well the lessons History is teaching us in this scoundrel time of a rotten system. It is time for fightback: for tenant organisation, rent-strikes, repo-resistance squads, for councils of the unemployed and all-sided resistance.