the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Mar 31, 2008
Since February 26, more than 3600 workers have been striking American Axle at factories in Hamtramck, Detroit and Three Rivers, Michigan, as well as in two plants in suburbs of Buffalo, New York.
Their picket lines have been circling the plants for five weeks now, refusing American Axle demands that they turn themselves into beggars. The company wants a wage cut of almost 50%, as well as elimination of health care and defined benefit pensions for future retirees
What else could the company do, complained CEO Richard Dauch, trotting out that rickety old warhorse of an excuse: “American Axle has no choice if it is to compete!”
No choice? Try to pass that one off on workers who just heard Axle’s announcement that Dauch made over ten million dollars in salary and stock options last year.
Of course a company like Axle has a choice. And they deliberately choose to reduce and reduce again the workers’ standard of living. They choose to increase their profits by increasing the exploitation of the work force.
This is not a question of one greedy company or one arrogant chief executive–even if he is a weasel. This is part of the mad drive of every big corporation in the country, pushing and shoving each other to see who can take the biggest concessions.
When General Motors, Chrysler and Ford got away with pushing through severe concessions last fall, cutting the wages of new hires by nearly 50%, eliminating their pensions, and severely reducing medical coverage, it was only a matter of time before some other company in the auto industry would step forward to demand those same cuts for everyone–long-time workers as well as new hires.
Those contracts–which barely passed, and then only because top UAW leaders maneuvered them through with threats, lies and moral bludgeoning–were an encouragement to every other company to up the ante.
American Axle–and how many others–rushed to up it.
Axle, of course, does not stand alone. General Motors is right there standing behind it, giving it a helping hand. GM shut down production at 30 of its plants, without even blinking an eye.
Why should it? It had built up inventory, giving it time to live through a strike that everyone knew was coming. At the beginning of March, for example, GM had a 129-day supply of Silverado pick-ups–one of its big money makers. Enough trucks to keep sales rolling in for more than four months.
GM knows that as this strike goes, so goes its own hopes for still greater concessions.
There’s a battle going on, which goes way beyond the workers at one plant or one company or one industry. There is a struggle to see whether workers throughout this country can keep the standard of living they and their parents once fought for.
American Axle is not the only one with allies. The strikers have them too–with the potential to change this situation radically. Regularly coming out to the Hamtramck picket lines have been workers from all over Southeastern Michigan. Last week-end workers were there from the State of Michigan offices, the city of Detroit, Ford plants, Chrysler plants, Blue Cross, and especially from GM plants. More than one GM worker said, “We should have done what you’re doing, we never should have given up, don’t you give up.”
Allies, yes, but more than allies. Fellow workers with their own very big reasons to put up a fight. The workers at GM, Ford and Chrysler know they made a mistake. Others know that they will soon face the same demands. Why wait? Why not join forces together?
We have the same problems, the same kind of greedy bosses. We have the same reason to fight. When we stand up together, we are stronger. It’s that simple.
Mar 31, 2008
Politicians who run the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports say they are taking the steps to clean up air pollution. These ports, which are amongst the largest in the world, produce more air pollution in the L.A. area than any other source.
Of course, as usual, the politicians are working hand in glove with the big profitable companies to shape a plan to their liking.
So the politicians are proposing that the shipping companies convert their ship’s engines to cleaner burning diesel fuels. These engines are so huge, some produce more pollution than 12,000 cars. The problem is that the politicians want the taxpayers to subsidize this conversion. That is, the same politicians who claim that the cities are in such bad financial shape that they have to raise taxes are handing over countless millions to some of the biggest and most profitable shipping companies in the world!
Such shameless handouts to big business have whet the appetite of other bosses, of course. Big rail companies, such as Union Pacific and Burlington, have jumped on the bandwagon. They have poured small fortunes into lobbying campaigns to build huge rail yards near the port, as a way to reduce truck traffic and pollution.
Of course, what they don’t say is that they are proposing to put the yards right in the middle of residential neighborhoods and next to public schools. This means that the people in those neighborhoods would be breathing in all those diesel fumes from idling trains and trucks.
No wonder residents of the overwhelming working-class area near the ports are up in arms. They have every reason to demand that the big, obscenely profitable corporations stop polluting.
At the same time, the taxpayers have to demand that our tax money goes to what we need, like schools and healthcare, and not to fatten the profits of big companies.
Mar 31, 2008
On March 8, one of our co-workers, Demetrius Brown, was found dead in the room he rented in a house in Indian Head, Maryland. He had been shot.
Demetrius was an all around good guy: easy going, laid back, fun loving, generous, sweet, gregarious....
In general, people were shocked, horrified, sad, angry, bewildered. DPI had a memo about Demetrius on the bulletin board with his picture.
The company said he “passed away.” He did NOT pass away–he was killed, shot to death.
One worker said, “He should be cremated and his ashes spread out in the owner’s son’s office ... this is an employee YOU failed. He had to rent a room in a house instead of being able to have his own house.”
Several workers asked, “Who would kill someone like Demetrius?” Lots of people looked in the newspaper for an answer, finding none. There was a little tiny article in the metro section. When something like this happens, we want it on the front page. But newspapers don’t pay attention to ordinary workers.
One worker said, “Someone knows what happened. No way no one heard the gunshot, twice!” Another said, “Another young black man cut down for no reason.”
Many of us are planning to go the funeral services. We decided, if management tries to say we cannot go, there will be a small rebellion.
(Twelve workers from DPI went to the funeral.)
Mar 31, 2008
Last week, the Iraqi government, in an attempt to show that they are in control of the country, ended up proving the opposite.
When the government sent the Iraqi army to disarm Shiite militias, the militias fought back–and a large number of the troops took off their uniforms and joined the militias openly. Bombing attacks on the Green Zone, the center of the U.S. presence in Baghdad, increased. And in Sadr City, a poor area of Baghdad, hundreds of thousands demonstrated against the Iraqi government and the U.S. occupation.
For the last couple of months, U.S. officials and the news media have pushed the idea that the U.S. “surge,” or military build-up, has reduced violence and promoted greater stability. But in the space of a few days, all that talk about how the “surge” was changing things in Iraq was exposed as a fiction.
The idea that the surge was just a temporary increase in the troops in Iraq has also been a fiction. The U.S. always intended to keep its troops there; it wants to control Iraq’s oil fields for U.S. corporations. It would like the situation there to be much more under its control, though, so they can get the oil out.
What hope is there that the presidential elections will end the war in Iraq? None.
Republican candidate John McCain has, of course, stated that the troops should remain in Iraq for as long as it takes–“100 years,” if necessary. He openly says that such a continuing presence isn’t even a question, just as troops have been stationed in South Korea, Germany, and many other places for more than half a century. He supports stepped-up operations to try to subdue the Iraqi population. He even dares to take credit for proposing the surge before Bush did.
The Democratic candidates are, in fact, no better.
Hillary Clinton states that she would start troop withdrawals within 60 days of entering office. But she doesn’t say how MANY troops she would withdraw, and how fast; and she doesn’t give any indication of when the troops would be finished withdrawing. She can easily say she’d BEGIN withdrawing troops (even Bush says that), but could take years and years to finish the job.
Barack Obama says this even more openly. For all his talk about “ending” the war in Iraq, he openly agrees with McCain that the U.S. will have a presence there for years to come. Of course, like everyone, he says he wants to reduce official U.S. troop casualties. He also says he wants to pull troops out. But he says that a “follow-on” force will be needed, including a security force to protect U.S. personnel in the country. In other words, Obama is proposing to replace some U.S. troops with other forces of occupation. Obama and his campaign staff refuse to rule out a role for hired mercenaries like Blackwater, or death squads from former regimes in El Salvador and South Africa.
So Obama is planning a sleight-of-hand in Iraq: pull soldiers out, then hire them back as private mercenaries. The war would go on; Americans and Iraqis would continue to die, but the numbers would be hidden from public view.
Hidden behind all the nice talk about “withdrawing troops” and “ending the fighting,” all three of the Republican and Democratic candidates plan to continue the war in Iraq, in one form or another.
In other words, after 5 years of war, little has changed. The latest promise of supposed success, the surge, has just been one more stage of an ongoing bloody debacle with no end in sight. And the latest crop of presidential candidates are proving to be little different than the current president in power.
When they tell us to wait for the election to end the war, they tell us to accept that it will continue.
Mar 31, 2008
A federal appeals court upheld a lower court decision that overturned a death sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal. He was convicted in 1982 of killing a Philadelphia cop.
The media present the decision as some sort of victory. In reality, the prosecution can still appeal the decision–and the threat of execution still hangs over Abu-Jamal’s head.
At the same time, the court let stand Abu-Jamal’s conviction, despite evidence that has been brought forward that someone else did the killing, that it was impossible for Abu-Jamal to have done the shooting, that police tampered with the evidence and that Abu-Jamal was tried before an almost all-white jury in a city where over 40% of the population is black.
All Abu-Jamal has asked for is a new trial.
Abu-Jamal is someone who, like many others of his generation, opposed racism, and injustice against poor people. From the time that he was a teenager, he stood up against police brutality in a city, Philadelphia, where it was rampant. He stood up against the impoverishment of the population as well.
So the authorities tried to make an example of him with a legal lynching. When a massive international protest movement didn’t let them get away with executing him right away, the authorities have played for time and dragged out his case in every way imaginable. They have kept him buried alive on death row for 26 years.
Every person with a conscience has an interest in supporting Mumia Abu-Jamal’s fight for justice.
Mar 31, 2008
Maryland’s Governor O’Malley and other top state officials claim they have scored a big victory for the 1.1 million residential customers of Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE). In an out-of-court settlement of lawsuits, BGE agreed to give each household a one-time rebate of $170.
Of course, over the last couple of years, BGE hiked electric rate hikes by 85%. As one BGE customer told a newspaper reporter, $170 won’t reimburse her for even one month of these increases. And even this pittance will be reduced by $35 to $40 in electric bill credits that BGE will now escape from paying to each of its customers as a result of another part of the settlement.
In fact, this agreement is a cover to allow BGE and its parent company, Constellation Energy, to carry out even more outrageous attacks. First of all, the state agreed to end all investigations–now and in the future–into the sleazy and crooked 1999 deregulation deal between BGE/Constellation and the state of Maryland.
Beyond this, the state will now assist Constellation in gaining federal approval for the construction of a third reactor at its Calvert Cliffs nuclear power complex.
Most importantly, this agreement allows BGE to continue charging its customers its incredibly high electricity rates.
No wonder the price of Constellation shares on the stock market went up over 3% on the day the settlement was announced. Quite a feat, considering how stock market prices overall are dropping!
Mar 31, 2008
Forty years ago, on April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
This political murder came at the height of the black movement which developed after World War II. It marked a turning point for that movement.
Dr. King’s assassination laid to rest the false hope that segregation and racism could be overcome by “non-violence.” In the endless chain of murders inflicted on the black population by a racist system, ready to maintain its power by any degree of violence necessary, the murder of this apostle of “non-violence” was the final straw.
The black population gave their immediate answer to King’s murder. Revolts erupted in more than 125 cities across the country.
The ruling class gave their answer as well–their usual answer. Seventy-five thousand National Guard were called out against the rebellions. Forty-six people were killed, 3500 injured, 20,000 arrested. In Oakland on April 7, police attacked the Black Panthers and murdered Bobby Hutton as he surrendered.
The revolts showed that the mobilization of the black population at that point was already well beyond what Dr. King and his associates had intended. When the young black militants moved on to the slogan of “Black Power,” they expressed the understanding that force had to be met with force.
Too many martyrs, by the hundreds, had been laid in graves through the years. Most often known only in their own towns or neighborhoods, or perhaps only in their family, these martyrs had been black men and women who had led local struggles, or simply stood up for themselves against arrogant racists–or who had done nothing at all, but been random victims of racist terror.
The urban explosions after Dr. King’s assassination showed that the black population would not peacefully accept one more victim. With their fists raised, young black people were expressing their desire to be free of the existing power and to build up a new power independent of the American ruling class, a class both bourgeois and white.
It seemed as though social revolution might shake the U.S., the citadel of imperialism. Black–and white–soldiers in Viet Nam were already rebelling, fragging officers, refusing missions, sabotaging naval vessels. Black veterans returned home ready to put their training to use in the movement.
With black fighters in the lead, young people in 1968 saw themselves as a new generation, ready to put aside personal ambition, in exchange for the chance to fight for the welfare of humanity.
It was a sign of the times that Dr. King was murdered while supporting a strike of sanitation workers. The black population’s struggles were generating a new consciousness of the power of masses of ordinary people, even beginning to extend into the white working class.
1968 might have been the year when the working class began the final struggle to toss capitalism itself on the scrap heap of history, forever. 1968 could have been the year which ushered in the work to organize a socialist society.
Instead, it became a high point of another struggle destined for the history books. The chance for revolution was turned aside.
But it was not only turned aside by repression. People were learning fast about how to overcome repression.
Nor was it diverted just by reforms–although the U.S. bourgeoisie began to grant a number of concessions to the black population. One week after King’s murder, Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of l968 against discrimination in housing. Jobs in major industries previously closed to black workers were suddenly made available.
What really mattered is that the ruling class accepted–and even hurried to set up–a layer of black politicians, who could stand as a proof that the system was finally responding to the needs of black people. Behind this claim was the unspoken idea that the population could relax and let the new black political class handle its affairs. And gradually this new black political class, with a personal stake in the system, worked to contain the firestorm of the movement and let it harmlessly burn to embers. As one witness said of Jesse Jackson, “he preached the riot out of those kids.”
As its reward, this new black professional and political layer was allowed to get a new place in the bosses’ scheme of things. As long as they continue to keep their part of the bargain, these modern black politicians, who never once put their bodies and their lives on the line for anything except their own personal advancement and enrichment, would be supported in the lifestyles and privileges that generations of white politicians already enjoyed.
But dishing out crumbs to a few would not have stopped the popular mobilization of 1968–if there had been an established leadership demanding not crumbs, but the whole loaf. There was no organization–no revolutionary workers’ organization–which could say to the black workers that unless they were ready to continue, to destroy the system and rebuild it in their own interests, they would not be able to get and keep what they needed.
Around the world, the situation was similar. In the midst of social upheavals in many countries in 1968, revolutionary workers’ organizations with sufficient weight had not been built.
But without such organizations, proposing to the workers and the oppressed in motion to go forward, to set up their own power, and to create their own society, a movement ultimately has no place to go.
Sooner or later we will see this same situation again. The ever increasing desperation of vast numbers of people, especially facing today’s economic downturn, generates a new social explosion, simmering below the surface. The outbreak of massive social struggles evens the odds of the oppressed with their oppressors.
But the laboring people have to be conscious, aware of the possibilities, ready to take advantage of opportunities that appear. There have to be revolutionary workers’ organizations built up ahead of time.
Getting there requires working-class militants to point the way past the politicians who make themselves best buddies to the bosses.
Of course, today, the numbers of such militants are much fewer than needed–and in fewer countries than needed. But the work they do today can open the door tomorrow.
What will be decisive when the next upheaval comes is whether enough people have done this preparation work.
Mar 31, 2008
On March 31, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson made a big surprise announcement. He announced he wouldn’t run for reelection. He also announced he would reduce U.S. bombing of North Viet Nam and he would start negotiating with the North Vietnamese government. So the desire for independence and the determination of the Vietnamese people made up for their impoverishment and forced the U.S. leaders to seek an end to the war.
At this stage, the U.S. leaders still threatened escalation if their adversaries didn’t let them save face. By agreeing to negotiate, the U.S. tacitly admitted that Viet Nam could end up under the control of the North Vietnamese government and the National Liberation Front in South Viet Nam. The U.S. recognized it could no longer keep a country under its domination by force of arms if the country fought for its independence.
But still, the U.S. leaders meant to preserve the status quo and squash any other nationalist challenge to U.S. domination in the region. The U.S. opened a diplomatic offensive toward Mao’s China to gain its cooperation. At the same time, the U.S. sought greater cooperation from Soviet leaders.
This policy came to be known as “detente.” It started under Johnson and was carried out by his successor, Richard Nixon, who went to China and Moscow to pursue negotiations while continuing hostilities in Viet Nam. If U.S. fire power wouldn’t permit the U.S. to win the war, it could at least weigh on the negotiations. Nixon enlarged the war to Laos and Cambodia, neighboring countries, carrying out a murderous bombardment against those people.
It took five more years until cease-fire agreements were signed between North Viet Nam, the NLF, the U.S. and its ally the South Vietnamese regime. U.S. troops left Viet Nam in March 1973, but the South Vietnamese, with U.S. aid, pursued the war for two more years before falling in April 1975. Viet Nam was finally unified.
The lesson of Viet Nam hasn’t prevented the U.S. from getting bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars in which more and more the U.S. appears unable to find a way out. The situation both in Iraq and in the U.S. army, has deteriorated to the point that the U.S. needs to remove its troops and yet it can’t. And so the people of the Middle East will go on paying a heavy price–like the people of Indochina did so many years ago.
Mar 31, 2008
A California slaughterhouse was caught slipping dangerous meat into the federal school lunch program. An undercover video showed a sick “downer” cow being lifted up by a fork-lift.
The slaughterhouse closed. But now the driver of the fork-lift has been sentenced to six months in jail!
If the driver had refused to lift the cow, he would have been fired on the spot. If he then would have taken his story to the court, he would have gotten no action, no help and no compensation.
But let the boss get in trouble, and what happens? The court goes after the worker! To prove there is justice!
They are finding scapegoats for the incredibly unsafe practices of the meatpacking companies, carried out with U.S. government complicity.
Mar 31, 2008
In the middle of March, workers from Ford Rouge, Ford Saline, Ford Sterling Heights, the State of Michigan, the Michigan Department of Mental Health, Blue Cross, the Post Office, Chrysler Warren Truck, Chrysler Trenton Engine, several General Motors plants, General Motors retirees, small auto parts plants and repair shops, the Detroit Department of Transportation, Taco Bell, CVS Drugstore, and teachers from various public school systems, among others, gathered in Detroit to share a meal with the SPARK.
It was the first barbecue of this long, cold and snowy winter, chasing the winter blues away with ribs and chicken, plus fresh green beans, creamed corn, mac & cheese, as well as salads and casseroles, plus those divine desserts everyone comes back for.
We laughed at ourselves in “Creature Comforts,” the Claymation talking animal series, by the same people who made Wallace & Grommit films. We gathered around to see Sparky the robot, a robot which let us understand a little more about what robots can do, as well as what they can’t do–and how they are misused today. We listened to and watched the video made during a concert by Grammy award winner Herbie Hancock, and we laughed as the SPARK Sunday Night Comedy Troupe gave us their version of the current election campaign. But the highlight of the meeting was “The State of the Working Class” address.
We reprint excerpts of the speech below, for all our friends and supporters who were not able to make it.
Let’s talk about the situation of the working class. Only one way to describe it–it’s an outrage!
We are entering the sixth year of the war in Iraq and we are in the seventh year of the war in Afghanistan–with no end in sight. The only war longer was the Viet Nam war, and these two wars threaten to break that deadly record.
And why? Why are we in these wars? Only so big oil companies can control the oil of the whole Middle East. While companies like Halliburton make out like the bandits they are, Iraqis continue to be killed, by the hundreds of thousands. The lives of Afghan people are being driven back to the days of the Middle Ages. And U.S. troops continue to be killed–almost 4,500 in the two wars–or suffer permanent injuries to their bodies and to their minds....
Working people pay the price for these wars–and not just in lives lost, but in hundreds of billion of dollars spent on war that could have been used to address the problems we have here at home.
And we have plenty of problems.
Jobs, for example–we’re losing them–a half a million people left the work force last month, most because they were laid off and couldn’t find a job....
But even when we keep our jobs, we don’t keep our wages and benefits....
Our wages go down–but do prices? NO! Gasoline, gas and electric for our homes, bread, milk, meat, fruit and vegetables–you name it and the price went up.
Why? Because of shortages? NO! The oil companies even admit there is no shortage today. Prices are going up because speculators–including the oil companies themselves–are buying and selling and buying again and selling again, driving prices up with each sale.
The big money people did it to housing yesterday. Today, they are doing it to oil, wheat, corn, soybeans–and we pay the price at the pump or the grocery store or in homes lost to the fraud perpetrated by the banks and mortgage companies.
The capitalists’ system is in crisis today. And the capitalists even admit it. They say that some of the biggest banks could collapse. And yet they don’t stop doing what they’ve been doing. They continue to speculate, creating the possibility of an even bigger mess.
They can’t stop themselves.
As far as we’re concerned, it’s time that working people stepped up to stop them.
For that, we have to feel our common interests to support each other when someone is attacked; to join each other when some of us fight, like the workers at American Axle today.
We have the right to benefit from the fruits or our labor. But it will take the fight of all of us standing together.
Mar 31, 2008
The current financial crisis could become the most serious since World War II. None other than Allan Greenspan, the former head of the Federal Reserve Board, made this catastrophic diagnosis. A serious economic crisis means thousands of businesses closed or functioning at a slower pace, mass layoffs and unemployment. It means thrusting a great part of the working population into misery.
This crisis does not come out of some natural catastrophe. Not at all. it is of the bosses’ own making.
For years, the bosses claimed that competition forced them to carry out more layoffs while pushing more work on those left on the job, and at lower pay and benefits. High profits came from the greater exploitation. But the companies didn’t invest the growing mass of profits in production and the creation of jobs. Instead the bosses put those profits into financial operations and speculation.
The frantic growth of speculation has led to the collapse of the U.S. mortgage loan system. The crisis has spread to the entire banking system. All the great banks worldwide bought up securities based on mortgages, since for a time they were quite profitable. But today these securities are worth almost nothing. All the big banks hold so many of these practically worthless securities that they are threatened with bankruptcy. The banks don’t even trust each other enough to extend credit to one another. They may be awash in money. But they won’t lend it out.
The first phase of this shock was translated into hundreds of thousands of layoffs in construction and in the banking sector in the U.S., the epicenter of the financial crisis. Then millions of families were tossed out of their homes since they could no longer make the outrageous payments.
As a result, consumption started to decline and recession is taking hold. And this crisis will not remain limited to the U.S., by far the biggest economy in the world.
Who will the leaders of the capitalist world force to pay for this catastrophe? Those who had nothing to do with it. Those on whose backs the capitalists make those profits. Now the central banks, that is, the governments, are trying to avoid a chain reaction of failures. They are distributing tremendous sums to the big banks and are proposing to continue cleaning up the banks’ mess by buying up their rotten securities with taxpayers’ money. The banks still pocket the profits while sticking the taxpayers with the losses.
Even if these leaders find a way to stop the bank crisis–no sure thing–their solution will accelerate world inflation. Price increases already undermine the purchasing power of workers and retirees. The capitalists are smashing down the purchasing power of the working classes. All that is being done in order to save the profits of bankers and speculators. Only a social explosion can prevent them from imposing this.
Society is sinking under the weight of an economic structure that is both unjust and irrational. For the working class, the only solution is to expropriate the capitalists. Workers must take hold of the bosses’ profits for their common needs.
Mar 31, 2008
Since the beginning of the financial crisis last summer, the governments of the capitalist powers have continually injected public money into financial markets, as they say, to “lower the pressure.” But, the pressure isn’t going down and confidence is not going up. Again and again, the sick financial system has been getting new injections of money.
In mid-March, the U.S. government made 400 billion dollars available to both commercial and investment banks in order to stabilize the panicky financial markets. On March 14, the U.S. Federal Reserve Board offered 30 billion dollars in loans to Bear Sterns investment bank alone, at a rate that would bring joy to any worker buying a car. On March 25, the European Central Bank loaned 15 billion dollars at a very low rate to European banks lacking liquidity.
For a long time now, governments and central banks have been spending money they don’t have in order to “plug the drain,” as a Japanese official put it. He and other leaders of the capitalist world now propose to completely buy up bad debts to make the market “healthy.” They say that soaking up all this speculative debt could cost from two to three trillion dollars.
And where will they get such a sum? From the pockets of the population.
And still it won’t solve their problems. For these trillions of dollars will appear as budget deficits. And how do governments pay for budget deficits? By price increases, stagnating wages, cutbacks in public services, infrastructure, education and health, and by increases in taxes. All these measures will be direct attacks falling hardest on those who can least afford it.
The U.S. is the country with both the richest capitalist corporations and the highest budget deficit (176 billion dollars for the month of February alone). Millions of people have lost their homes; bridges have collapsed in the middle of cites due to lack of maintenance; the working class standard of living is in free fall. Furthermore, the central place of the U.S. in the world economy allows its competitors to finance its debt. So now Chinese workers can also pay part of the U.S. deficit.
All the other capitalist countries, like France or Britain, are more or less at the same point, following the same road. So this eventual levy of three trillion dollars on the backs of the populations, far from putting an end to the financial crisis, will only accelerate it. Until when?