The Financial Crisis Worsens:
Governments War against Their Own People

Jul 18, 2011

Since July 11, a wave of panic has seized the stock exchanges all over the world as the financial crisis, in the form of debt-ridden governments, takes a turn for the worse. It took just one change in rating by Moody’s, lowering the credit rating on the financial viability of Portugal, to raise the idea that a financial crisis even worse than that of 2008 is about to arrive.

The interest rate that the Portuguese state must pay in order to cover the deficit left after bailing out its banks, has now risen to 17%. Of course, these enormous interest rates are going to be paid to the big banks and other financial institutions, out of the sweat and the blood of the Portuguese people who are already being told they will have to make new sacrifices.

It is the same in Italy, which got the same treatment by the credit rating agencies. Italy saw the interest rates charged on its debt skyrocket to new highs. Just afterward, the leader of the German government, Angela Merkel, insisted that there must be additional cuts in the Italian budget, even though 47 billion Euros in cuts were already announced, with disastrous consequences for the population. And none of this anguish touches the debt in Greece, which is again the subject of behind-the-scene threats and negotiations on its debt.

The financial markets, the big banks and other financial institutions all raise the interest rates at which they are willing to make loans, thus tightening their stranglehold on countries they target.

The sacrifices demanded of the populations to pay this debt are endless. The majority of the population will be reduced to miserable conditions. They may see an end to their access to health care, to education and to housing in order to reassure these infamous financiers, who demand that each dime they lend will be paid back in gold upon demand.

But the financial ‘markets’ are anonymous. In reality, they consist of the largest banks–like JP Morgan Chase or Goldman Sachs–and the largest insurance companies in the world and other big bourgeois families, like the Waltons, the Rockefellers, the duPonts, the Koch brothers, etc. At the most basic level, they are funded by the billions in profits extorted from workers everywhere.

And all the governments act as financial executioners of their own people.

There is absolutely no reason to submit to the dictates of these 21^st century loan sharks, who, in addition to the sacrifices they demand, risk precipitating an even greater economic crisis for the whole world.

Of course, the first measure to be taken should be to cancel these debts and to expropriate all the banks and financial institutions. And beyond that, control of the economy and of society must be torn out of the hands of these dangerous fools, these speculators, bankers, financial and industrial controllers, who are totally irresponsible.