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
Dec 10, 2012
U.S. banks recorded nearly 38 billion dollars in profits during the third quarter of 2012, up 6.6 percent from the same period in 2011. The top one to two percent of all banks got most of these soaring profits–82 percent of them. If bank profits remain at this level or higher for a year, they will exceed the record set in 2006, before the housing bubble burst.
It’s not surprising that bank profits are so high. The government has been bailing them out ever since the start of the financial and economic collapse that they triggered. The government is continuing to buy up bad mortgage loans the banks made that created the housing bubble. And it is lending them all the money they want at extremely low rates, which they are taking and lending out at much higher rates–some of it right back to the government.
Working people here and around the world are paying for all these handouts. Public services and social programs are being shredded to pay off the money the government is borrowing–from the banks–in order to continue to bail them out.
With help like this, how could their profits not go up?