The Socialist 4 August 2010

Con-Dem cuts mean: we need ‘biggest movement since poll tax’

We need 'biggest movement since poll tax'

'Radical' cuts require serious action

Waltham Forest's Labour council faces opposition

Coventry campaigners fight cuts of £140 million

Swansea trades council leads battle for services

Campaigners answer Bristol's 'Big Conversation'

Cuts news: Mental health services facing the axe

NSSN pledged to fight cuts

Troops out now!

Afghanistan: US strategy in disarray

Oppose divisive academies policy

Talks resume at British Airways

Angry workers strike over pay freeze and bosses' bonuses

Fighting fire service cuts

Witch-hunted Unison activist wins tribunal

Unite general secretary election

We won't be a lost generation, fight for jobs and education!

No to privatisation of our universities

For real jobs, not slave labour

Profiting from wrecking the environment

Stop the Cardiff incinerator

Save Wanstead Flats

Daily Mail admits guilt over smearing Tamil hunger striker

Campaigning at Leeds Pride

Book now for the summer camp!

Socialism 2010 - a weekend of discussion and debate

Love Parade catastrophe was entirely preventable

Garment workers demand a living wage

Asda profiting from low pay

Tories put profits before patients

Rich just carry on getting richer

Fast news

The howlers' world and ours

How the banks rip us off

Previous issues, etc

Print this issue




Link to this page: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/634/10085

Google search the site	Printable version	email to friend

Home | The Socialist 4 August 2010 | Join the Socialist Party

Subscribe | Donate | Bookshop

How the banks rip us off

CON-DEM Business Secretary Vince Cable told journalists he thinks banks are "ripping off" taxpaying customers with unfair charges and cynically using massive bail-out packages to pay their top speculators ridiculous bonuses out of the public purse.

The BBC considers this news. The rest of us are already painfully aware that the banks have had the taxpaying public, and successive pro-capitalist governments, over a barrel for some considerable time.

As a low-paid, taxpaying worker employed by one of the big bailed-out banks currently ripping off the country, I speak to customers daily who are being saddled with spiralling debt that pushes them further and further into poverty.

The bank is very well aware that its irresponsible speculation and near-collapse has contributed to this.

This corporation pays me £7 an hour to enforce its exploitative charges system, threatening me with disciplinary action if I refuse to do so.

The bank is clawing back credit from financially struggling customers to whom it previously lent with extreme irresponsibility.

It is levying impossible charges on them to raise enough capital to buy back the shares it sold to the government, so it can speculate further.

It knows it can do this because it has the backing of the courts. They previously ruled that such unethical charges are in fact legal and above board, and because this pro-capitalist government is so in thrall to the financial markets, it is powerless to do anything to stop it.

The only answer to this sorry state of affairs is the genuine nationalisation of the banks, democratically controlled by the workers, as part of a planned socialist economy based on the needs of the masses and not the profits of greed-driven capitalists.