Writing out loud

By AM Wednesday, April 17, 2013

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Guest writer Davy Carlin with his latest take on austerity

In recent times we have seen the banks bailed out by our public money being handed over to them. Now we see in Cyprus the bankers going into citizens’ private bank accounts and stealing the money directly from them to cover the banks gambling debts.

Furthermore the Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Disjsselbloem, who presently fronts the Euro group, had initially stated that this deal could serve as a future template for further bank reconstruction in the Eurozone.

Only hours after this statement Joerg Kraemer, chief economist of the German Commerzbank, called for the same to be done to savings accounts in Italy.

Yet, in stating this, Jeroen Disjsselbloem is saying what European banking leaders already believe, that citizens savings in the Eurozone will be raided if needs be to prop up the banking sector, the bankers and their cartels.

Already being hammered with harsh austerity measures that continue for citizens, the process of seizing control of nation state economies so as to continue the asset stripping of wealth into the hands of the banking elite also escalates.

We have been here time and again with the World Bank the IMF and other such brutal and dictatorial organisations over the decades, where a  ‘quick boom and bust’ situation is deliberately created, so as a ‘fire sale’ of citizens and countries wealth can be  scooped up at rock bottom prices while also leaving them indebted to the banking elite.

It is clear to see that governments and countries are beholden to the banks and the banking elite, who are in reality accountable to no-one, and we are told that that is democracy.

Yet that may be of little surprise when we see from even the so called great democracy, that of the USA, that it’s very financial system is controlled and owned by private banking cartel elites.

The Federal Reserve in the USA, it’s so called central bank, is not federal nor a reserve. It is but a cartel of a few banking elites, yet they set interest rates, they lend the government money {just huge numbers on a screen} which the American taxpayers pay back with interest. The actual federal government does not own a single share nor are citizens able to purchase shares from the ‘central bank’, and the Fed in its history has not published audited accounts.

This situation is replicated throughout the capitalist system where the majority of wealth is seized and controlled and put into the hands of a very few.

With that, we have seen their laws being used time and again to support them, many such laws used against the most vulnerable in the most savage of ways.  Yet sometimes an individual example says much for the system we presently live under. For example, recently a homeless man in the USA, James Kelly, a former veteran, was given a citation for searching for scraps of food in a trash can: his crime - doing it in a Houston downtown business district. We also have their controlled media and their ever increasing relentless attacks on the most vulnerable calling many scroungers and dole hoppers, this, as prices on essentials go up {through their control policies} while the severe austerity measures continue to hammer down.

At the same time our Politicians on the Hill seek to raise their champagne glasses to another £5,000 pay rise for delivering little beyond waffle, while the Queen of England gets another £5,000,000 for simply being the Queen of England. All this while Tory Toffs bleat about how they could live on £53 pound a week if they had to: easy to say when you live a life of privilege and wealth. We of course also have the governments beholden to the banks and such organisations, while implementing the severe austerity measures for them.

Here in the North while we see sectarian tensions and division on the rise in recent times and while some continue to mobilise and fight over what colour of flag should be stapled onto many evermore poor and pathos laden kitchen tables, a recent report carried out by researchers from Queens University has found that thousands of people In Northern Ireland cannot even afford to eat two meals a day.

And in such times you do hear a growing number directing their anger at those not working, those on the dole, even though there is little work about, this again plays into the hands of the politicians implementing  such austerity measures and cuts, as well as into the hands of those banks and bankers who created the situation in the first place.

Rather than feeding into those perceptions, and letting the politicians implement the austerity measures while letting the bankers run of laughing their way into their banks with the wealth stolen from citizens and countries alike, we need to begin to organise against the chaos of the capitalist system which is destroying the lives of millions.

This organising and solidarity can begin even in a small way as seen in recent times with the small scale strikes and local community struggles in the North, through to those much larger and mass scale mobilisations seen within other countries also in recent times.

Solidarity can be seen in many forms, and it is there, may it be seen in those recent strike actions, or from those mobilising against internment and in support of prisoner issues, through to those many citizens who took to clearing the streets for and with their neighbours after the recent snow blizzards.

It is this solidarity within the workplaces and communities that we must tap into and strengthen in the time ahead.

It is this solidarity that can help to further show the struggle for political and economic emancipation - as being connected.