Global financial meltdown: Is this the end of Capitalism?

international | anti-capitalism | event notice Monday September 22, 2008 00:41 by kevin - SWP swpballymun at eircom dot net 086-3074060

Finglas Public Meeting

Thursday 25th September, 8pm, Shamrock Pub (upstairs) Finglas Village

The collapse of Lehman Brothers, the fourth biggest investment bank in the US, has left the world reeling. Millions of people are worrying for their jobs, homes, savings and pensions.
It was entirely predictable that the financial system would go into crisis. The trigger was the US “subprime” mortgage crisis where lenders targeted poor people with loans at extortionate rates of interest.
It was clear from the beginning that millions would be unable to repay them.But the lenders made money from selling on the debts to other banks.
Now the chickens are coming home to roost. No one knows how deep the crisis will be or who will be next to fall.
Faced with this chaos, world leaders keep telling us that the economy is “basically sound” and that any crisis will be mild and short-lived.
As these leaders become increasingly removed from reality, working class people the world over are left to pay the price.
While the government and employers demand wage freezes, below inflation increases and job cuts, the millionaire speculators are being bailed out to the tune of $180 billion.
This is socialism for the rich—privatising profit and socialising losses.
For the last twenty years we have been constantly told that their is no alternative to the market, that industries like Telecom Eireann and Aer Lingus must be profitable and privatised.
The speed with which Bush nationalised the world’s largest insurance company, AIG and took over US morgage giants Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae exposes how our rulers don’t believe their own “free market” rhetoric and are prepared to use nationalisation to bail out their millonaire friends.
If they can do that for rip-off speculators, why can’t they do the same to defend jobs and maintain our services?
As global capitalism heads into what could be a 1930s-style depression, the case for a socialist alternative is making more and more sense to huge numbers of people.
Come to this meeting and which will discuss what lies behind this crisis and why we need to fight for an alternative to a system of mega-profits, crisis, exploitation, poverty and war.