Australian Bankers Association seeks to strengthen ruling class power

Written by: (Contributed) on 5 Juky 2026

 

The recent Australian Banking Association (ABA) Conference received a report from the assistant governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Brad Jones, which addressed 'challenges to international cohesion, which had re-emerged for a number of years'. (1) The peak trade association is highly influential inside the corridors of power in Canberra and other provincial cities across Australia. The report, therefore, can be taken in that light.

The assessment provided an insight into recent global developments, which were based on a comparison with the so-called New World Order of yesteryear. The immediate period following the previous Cold War, was marked by the US placing itself at the centre of the global economy with three main considerations: to enhance security by maintaining a strong defence capability and promoting co-operative security measures, to open foreign markets and spur global economic growth, and to promote US-style democracy abroad. (2)

The ABA report referred to the three main security considerations as being responsible for having 'greased the wheels of global finance and trade'. (3) It was marked by capital being flung to the four corners of the global economy from international financial institutions largely controlled by the US, with longer-term implications for hegemonic positions. A surge in the use of financial sanctions in recent years “meant that financial institutions were increasingly exposed to ‘significant legal and business risk’ if they wanted to engage in cross-border trade and investment.” Threats from technology and cyberspace were now much more common.

Over the last two decades, developments have not followed the planned projections; in fact, the US seriously miscalculated its potential global reach. It failed:                                   
                                            
Global GDP growth (annual %)
                                                             1994  - 3.4 %
                                                             2024  - 2.9 %     (4)

Recorded global economic growth has continued to drop on the annual basis, as the tide has turned, with countries once on the periphery of the world economy now grabbing centre space. Countries once regarded as onside with the US are now swinging toward trade organisations, including BRICs and the Gulf Co-operation Council, which has raised serious security considerations as shown with the recent US war with Iran.
                                                 
Economic statistics from elsewhere in the global economy, reveal the US has already been pushed away from its central position. Studies of the development have revealed that while the US still maintains 59 per cent of global foreign exchange reserves, it has been seriously challenged by the BRICs trade body, and others. (5) In fact, it has been noted that the BRICs 'has established financial institutions to bypass Western-controlled systems' (6) The
US-petro-dollar has been seriously challenged by countries using other currencies. (7)

And with the growing economic turmoil, came political and diplomatic considerations. The ABA report, for example, used terminology including reference to 'challenges to international cohesion … a … fragmenting of cross-border capital flows, increasing evasion of sophisticated sanctions and weakening the public-private coordination'. (8)

The nightmare scenario for the US, however, was initially placed onto the agenda of the World Economic Forum in Davos, nearly two decades ago. The annual global financial forum, in January 2008, for example, received a report that while the US maintained control of about a third of the world's financial assets with a US$56.1 trillion share, the emerging markets of the recently globalised world economy held US$26.3 trillion; the growth rates of the latter were twice as dynamic as the former. (9)

The report, marking the origins of a general trend, nevertheless, fell on deaf ears. Influential decision-makers in international financial institutions were more inclined to make a fast buck, rather than consider the longer-term implications of their policies, which they foisted upon allies: de-regulation, privatisation, liberalisation.

Economic statistics from the period in question reveal those on the receiving end of the vast flows of capital, thrived; they continue to do so.

Studies of various regions of the global economy have revealed that in the period 2014-24, for example, the economies of Latin America experienced a 52 per cent growth rate, their counterparts in the Asia-Pacific region expanded by 50 per cent, double that of the US and Euro-zone. (10)

Alarm in Washington about the former, and the fate of their already decrepit Monroe Doctrine, was addressed in a recent Congressional Report which found China had become a major player, not only in BRICs, but also in what the US regarded as their Latin American 'backyard'. (11) Government departments in Washington which should have been assessing the developments, remained blissfully ignorant for creating the very economic conditions for their own demise.  Arrogance, would appear a very appropriate term, for describing such negligence on their part.

A recent diplomatic statement from US Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessant, has revealed the scale of the problem arising for the US; the diplomatic terminology is worthy of scrutiny. Reference to 'strategic industries migrated abroad', did not pay attention to the race-to-the-bottom mindset of globalisation, whereby constant cost-cutting pushed whole industries into emerging economies to maximise the rate of profit. (12) Reference in the statement, likewise, to 'critical supply chains concentrated in unfriendly jurisdictions', has provided a clear indication of the already changed balance of forces which has taken place due to globalisation. (13)

Much of the buffoonery accompanying the Trump presidential administration, moreover, is best assessed in the light that it reflects the most aggressive side of both Washington and the Pentagon. Policies are based upon the pretext of a last-ditch position with stormy scenarios looming on the horizon; the recent US diplomatic statement, for example, made reference to an assessment based upon the premise that 'other countries began to exploit our dependence as leverage. Now is the time to correct this'. (14)  Significant obstacles to the US diplomatic position, however, lie in their way. It is unlikely to change.

Studies conducted by the BRICs, for example, have found it has already managed to control over half of global financial assets. (15) Its National Development Bank, furthermore, has been described as a 'cornerstone for South-South co-operation, financing projects in local currencies that challenge the dominance of the US dollar in global finance'. (16)   Reliable sources have revealed BRICs has already reached a 35.6 per cent share of the global economy. (17) The US, in contrast, has continued to drop in significance:

                                                          2025 – 12.9 %
                                                          2026 – 12.8 %
                                                          2030 – 12.2 % projection  (18)

And with the slow economic demise of the US has come the inevitable political and diplomatic considerations about longer-term viability.
                           
The fact the ABA report also drew attention to the problem of Cold War spies and warnings from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network about Chinese military intelligence personnel using Western social media platforms to 'recruit Western targets', was not a coincidence. (19) It would all appear a throw-back to the previous Cold War, marked by a preoccupation of the 'enemy within' and fifth columnists hell-bent on undermining Australia. Attempts, by Canberra, to systematically strengthen class and state power are best assessed in that light; the mentality remains based in the notion of 'they have spies, we have agents'. Declassified documents from the period provide mind-boggling facts about the uses and abuses of power and intelligence-gathering techniques. They make a sobering read.                                

In conclusion, the ABA report has provided a glimpse of the dominant thinking inside the corridors of power in Canberra and Australia's provincial cities; it can be regarded as significant it has been accompanied by a similar report which revealed that only a minority of Australians now even trust decision-makers in Washington. (20) Traditional US hegemonic positions have been challenged.

The tide has turned, and keeps turning: We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     Don't repeat post-Cold War error: RBA, Australian, 18 June 2026.
2.     Report: US President Clinton to Congress, 21 July 1994.
3.     Australian., op.cit., 18 June 2026.
4.     GDP Growth (annual %), World Bank Group.
5.     BRICs and the shift away from dollar dependence, Chicago Policy Review, University of Chicago, 8 October 2025.
6.     Ibid.
7.     Two years ago, Saudi Arabia quietly cancelled the 'petro-dollar, Fortune, 7 April 2026.
8.     Australian, op.cit., 18 June 2026.
9.     Davos salutes SWFs in a celebration of global capitalism, Australian, 29 January 2008.
10.   Rethinking the rules for growth, McKinsey / Boston Consulting Group, 17 June 2025.
11.   'Pulling Latin America into China's orbit', US Congressional Report, 28 February 2026.
12.   Five core principles drive US economic statecraft, Australian, 25 June 2026.
13.   Ibid.
14.   Ibid.
15.   BRICs financial assets surpass $60 trillion, teleSur, 4 July 2025.
16.   Ibid.
17.   Expansion of BRICs, Bank of France Bulletin, Number 250, Article 2, 26 February 2024.
18.   US % of global GDP, World Economics, World Economics Research, London.
19.   Australian, op.cit., 18 June 2026.
20.   See: In an 'unsafe' world, we no longer trust US, Australian, 23 June 2026.

 

Finance Sector Union Condemns Westpac Which "Lets 500 Staff Go" While Profits Soar To $4 Billion In Last 6 Months!

 Written by: Ned K. on 18 June 2023

While workers struggle to cope with the impact of rising interest rates, Westpac has sacked 500 workers in the last two weeks and says it will "let go" another 116 workers in coming months.

"Letting go" is the big banks and other corporate giants' euphemism for sacking workers and throwing them on the unemployment scrap heap of capitalism.

The Finance Sector Union national secretary, Julia Angrisano's statement said, "Westpac is wallowing in record profits on the back of mortgage interest rate rises but that hasn't stopped its insatiable appetite for job cuts."

The sackings come at the same time as Westpac increased its half year profits by 22% to the amount of $4 billion.

No doubt Westpac and the other big three banks will say that their profits are distributed to shareholders and to repay money borrowed from overseas banks. However, most of the shareholders are big corporations and very little of the big banks’ profits end up with mum and dad shareholders or modest income self-funded retirees.

In the late 1940s there was an attempt by popular demand to nationalize big banks.

The High Court ruled that this was not allowed under the Australian Constitution.

This showed how much the Constitution served the interests of the corporate ruling class rather than the people when it was made.

Nationalizing the big four banks is needed as part of securing an independent financial sector which puts people's financial needs before profits. 

Nationalizing the banks as a demand on the federal government will have popular support.

Australia's big four banks fuel climate channge

John C

 

To the vast majority of the population, the link between the burning of fossil fuels and the alarming change in our planet’s climate is a no brainer. So much so that people’s action is creating an impediment to the otherwise unfettered expansion of the fossil fuel industry.

 

Nonetheless, the investment into new fossil fuel projects continues. These types of projects are expensive, which require the supply of large amounts of capital. For them to go ahead, the companies involved must borrow this capital. Of course this is where the banks come in by lending the capital to the fossil fuel industry.

 

It goes without saying that if the banks cease to lend money to the fossil fuel industry, this environmentally disastrous activity will go into decline.

 

Back in 2015 the Paris climate agreement was signed which vowed to keep the increase in global temperature to less than 2oC above the pre-industrial temperature. Almost 200 countries signed this agreement and many companies around the world, including Australia’s big four banks were supportive of its goals.

 

To the banks, it is a good look in the eye of the public to appear to be behind an issue that is near to the hearts of the people.

 

For example, back in 2017 the momentum behind the peoples’ anti-Adani coal mine actions made Westpac have a re-think about lending money to Adani - it refused to lend it money. Similarly 17 banks around the world have also refused to lend Adani money. This campaign by the Australian people to pressure the four big Australian banks not to lend money to the Adani project commenced in late 2014. By 2015 NAB indicated that it would not be lending money to Adani. Now all four big banks have made such statements .

 

Whilst this one example is a great victory, and appears to be a step in the right direction, Australia’s big four banks continue to lend large amounts of money to other new fossil fuel projects and for the expansion of existing ones. This includes coal, oil and gas projects.

Many of these are outside of Australia, so we do not get to hear too much about them, but they are extremely significant in terms of making the goal of the Paris climate change agreement unattainable.

 

Fortunately, an entity known as “Market Forces”, which is an affiliate of Friends of The Earth Australia has carried out some good quality research into the role of the big four Australian banks in providing investment capital to these projects .

 

This research indicates that since late 2015, the big four have actually increased their level of lending to the fossil fuel sector.

The capital they have lent to projects which expand fossil fuel production is $3.89 billion. The breakdown for each bank is just over $1.3 billion each by ANZ and CBA followed by Westpac and NAB each lending over $500 million. These new projects will add another 4.9 billion tonnes of CO2 emission load to the planet over their lifetime. To put this into perspective, this is equivalent to cancelling out Australia’s 2021 – 2030 emissions reduction target by over five times.

 

Many of these new projects relate to gas. Gas is often passed off as being a “clean” fuel in order to justify the expansion of its use. This is a furphy because the chemistry is the same - the combustion of one molecule of carbon in the form of gas (hydrocarbon) still produces one molecule of CO2.

 

In the same period, the total capital lent by the big four banks to the fossil fuel industry covering all aspects of the sector’s activities is some $21 billion. Again ANZ and CBA lead in this dirty activity by lending over $7 billion each followed by Westpac and NAB each lending about $3 billion.

 

As these figures illustrate, not only are the big four banks instrumental in the expansion of new fossil fuel projects, they play a vital role in propping up the existing fossil fuel sector.

 

By contrast, in the same period they lent only $6.1 billion to renewable energy projects.

 

Clearly, Australia’s big four banks are in shameful violation of their stated commitment to the goals of the Paris climate agreement. In fact they have placed the achievement of the crucial cap of less than 2oC increase in global temperature in jeopardy, endangering the future of our species.

 

This is all in addition to the banks’ other shameful and abhorrent financial operations recently exposed by the Banking Royal Commission, which, let’s face it, only scratches the surface. So, the big banks have a lot to answer for.

 

Peoples’ action has put a bit of a brake on the banks’ lending practices to the fossil fuel industry - these peoples’ actions are invaluable and must continue - however, under the system of capitalism the irreparable damage to the environment cannot be halted or reversed.

 

Only by nationalising the banks and eventually serving the people under a system of socialism can the activities of the banks be channelled towards the effort of restoring the unity between humankind and nature in a sustainable manner.

References
1. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/28/big-four-banks-all-refuse-to-fund-adani-coalmine-after-westpac-rules-out-loan

2. https://www.marketforces.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/2018-Banks-two-degree-scorecard.pdf

3. https://www.marketforces.org.au/campaigns/banks-new/twodegrees/#commitments

Banks: Laughing all the way…

Nick G.

The Big Four Australian banks are laughing all the way to another round of obscene levels of profit.

Just a few days ago, NAB announced a cash profit of $6.6 billion, up 2.5% on the previous year.  The cash profit is often a loosely constructed figure, not subject to independent auditing, and pushed through the media to boost investor confidence and share prices.

The more accurate figure is the independently audited statutory profit. What companies highlight in the media and to shareholders is often different to that which is in their statutory accounts.  Statutory figures are those presented by the company in their formal company reports.  They include asset write-offs. In 2016 NAB wrote of losses on the sale of the Clydesdale Bank in the UK and 80% of NAB Wealth’s life insurance business. Thus, in 2016 statutory net profit fell 94.4% to $352 million.

This year, statutory profit rose from 2016’s impairment-heavy $352 million to $5.285 billion.  That still leaves a $1.4 billion gap between the cash profit and the statutory profit.

But even the statutory profit is open to question.  Outgoing Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) Chairman Greg Medcraft has lashed out at the big four accounting firms (Deloitte, KPMG, PWC and Ernst and Young) for their poor auditing of big corporations, including the banks.

Criticised just weeks ago for being too soft on the big end of town, Medcraft urged that shonky auditors face criminal, rather than civil charges, and warned of an Enron-syle financial collapse.

The banks didn’t seem to care about Medcraft’s belated criticisms and just kept laughing.
And why shouldn’t they?
T
hey had just won a victory over the SA government’s proposed budget measure involving a state charge of $36 in each $1,000,000 of their profits.  The measure was voted down in the Legislative Council courtesy of the opposition Liberals, Australian Conservatives and a former Xenophon MLC. They had taken their cues from ex-Queensland Labor Premier Anna Bligh who continues her work for the capitalist class as the CEO of the Australian Bankers Association. Bligh pushed a Henny Penny style scare campaign, alleging that the sky would fall down over SA if the bank levy went ahead.

Do you think the banks weren’t laughing about that?

And just to show how funny they really could be, NBA  included in its statement about a tidy little profit of $5.2 billion (or $6.6 billion -  you choose) that it would sack 6000 existing employees and take on 2000 new employees in a restructure designed to save more than $1 billion in costs by the end of the 2020 financial year.

Only they didn’t use the word “sack”.  Their “roles will be impacted”.  In between guffaws they pledged “Throughout this process we will treat our people with care and respect and equip them for the future.”

The Big Four banks are real pranksters. They blather to the skies about their profitability but say nothing about their indebtedness to US finance capital.

According to a 2017 report, Indispensable Economic Partners: The US-Australian investment  relationship, the Big Four banks are heavy borrowers from US finance capitalists.  Between 25% and 36% (depending on the bank) of their funding is largely sourced from the United States and is more than triple the amount that comes from shareholders.

That means that much of the money they rip off from us is simply used to repay – with interest of course – their financial masters in the USA.

Expect to hear more laughter in the coming days and weeks as the other three banks release their cash profit and statutory profit misleading and confusing figures. 

On the proposed SA levy - Make the Banks Pay!

Nick G.

South Australia’s decision to impose a copy-cat levy on big bank superprofits has been met with howls of outrage by the banks.

It follows the federal government’s recent announcement of a 0.6 percent tax on the liabilities  of the big five banks (Commonwealth, Westpac, ANZ, NBA and Macquarie).

It should have come as no surprise to the banks. When former Prime Minister Abbott was pushing his new federalism, aimed at getting states and territories to raise more of their own revenue, one of his unlikely supporters was SA Premier Weatherill who proposed a state tax on financial transactions.

Banks: rich whingers with closed pockets

The big Australian banks are highly protected species.  They have not been required to contribute to government revenue to anything like the levels of bank taxes in other OECD countries.  This is despite their being the most profitable banks in the world. Bank profits as a percentage of GDP are two and a half times as large here as in the US and three times larger than the UK.

To say that it is high time the banks were made to cough up some of their profits to the public purse is a very generous understatement.

The most recent profits of the big banks were NAB, $6.4 billion; Westpac, $7.4 billion; ANZ, $5.7 billion; Commonwealth Bank, $9.2 billion; Macquarie, $2.2 billion.
Yet the proposed SA bank levy is of the order of one-third of one percent of their profits, or $36 in every $1,000,000!

And for this, the banks have screamed that they will be put out of business in SA, that it will ruin SA businesses and home buyers.

For this, the SA Liberal Opposition, having initially said it would not block Supply and following a meeting with bank representatives, now proposes to block the levy with the support of the Australian Conservatives and Xenophon’s Legislative Council member.

The CEO as a common thief

Those who have orchestrated the banks’ response to the SA levy, the chief executives and directors of those banks, have criminally high levels of remuneration. Criminally, because their salaries are theft from ordinary Australians in the form of bank fees and charges, and interest on loans.

Leading the charge is the Macquarie Group’s CEO at $18.5 million, followed by the CEOs of the Commonwealth ($8.7m), Westpac ($6.7m), NAB ($6.7m), and ANZ ($5m). 
That is, those five people collectively earn $44.5 million.

The SA bank levy aims to raise $90 million.

One million seven hundred thousand South Australians will share the equivalent of $26 each and this is complained about by five very high net worth individuals (aka stinking rich scum) who are rolling in multimillions per year!

And that’s just the CEO’s.  Throw in the several tens of millions of dollars each of the five banks pays to its Directors and the scale of the banks’ theft from their Australian “customers” begins to take shape.

Forget the one percent – it’s 0.02 percent at the bank

To try and spook the public, the banks and their apologists such as SA Opposition leader Stephen Marshall portray the levy as an attack on “consumers, it is going to come from business, or it is going to come from the 150,000 people in South Australia who have bank shares, or everybody's superannuation.”

Shareholding has sometimes been portrayed as “people’s capitalism”, and 150,000 seems like a large slice of the SA population. Yet “mum and dad” shareholders are very small fry in companies listed on the Stock Exchange, and banks are no exception.

Take the Commonwealth for example.  It has 819,613 shareholders, some of whom would be certainly be South Australians. The vast majority, 599,302, own less than 1000 shares each. They comprise 73.12 percent of total shareholders and control 11.14 percent of the bank’s issued capital. At the other end of the scale, the 188 who own more than 100,000 shares each comprise just 0.02 percent of shareholders and control 48.64 percent of the issued capital. (Common parlance depicting the super-rich as the “one percent” is a very generous overstatement next to those 0.02 percent of the largest shareholders in the Commonwealth Bank – not that “common wealth” has ever been an accurate label for the bank.)

The proposed SA bank levy is progressive, worthwhile and just.  Like the federal levy, it’s just a drop in the ocean of what the banks could be contributing if they were nationalised entities in an independent socialist economy.

At both federal and state level, we should make the banks pay.

It won’t bring capitalism to its knees, but it will help to alleviate the fears and uncertainties for the future felt by a growing number of working, underemployed and unemployed Australians. 

The world enters a third wave of economic crisis, with more to come!

Max O

In November last year The Economist, that foremost economic journal of capitalism, stated that "The world is entering a third stage of a rolling debt crisis..." The first one centred on the US with the collapse of the real estate market (2008), the second one centred on the European Union and its members’ sovereign debt crisis and now the current or third one on the Emerging markets - places like China and Brazil.

The financial crash that we have been witnessing at the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016 may be far larger as it unfolds than in 2008, possibly causing the entire global economy to grind to a halt.

Global and Central Banks cause the crisis

As usual the large global banks and financial institutions are up to their necks in this crisis. With the collapse of oil and gas prices these banks are at risk because their loans to energy companies are now bad debts.

Europe's biggest bank, the Deutsche Bank, has suffered a loss of more than 9 per cent (due to its loans exposure to energy companies) and has hit Australian banks hard.

Morgan Stanley investment bank reported that 'Australia's big four banks' are owed $31 billion from energy companies. The Commonwealth Bank has the biggest risk of $11.6 billion owed to it. Since the beginning of this year, the market values of Australia's two major banks have nose-dived: ANZ down 18.66 per cent and Westpac 14.5 per cent.

J.P. Morgan bank reported that private-sector debt in emerging markets climbed from 73% of GDP at the end of 2007 to 107% of GDP by the end of 2014. The emerging markets debt figure rises even more sharply to 127% of GDP if credit from non-bank financial institutions (so-called “shadow banks”) is included.

The US Federal Reserve and other major central banks through the policy of quantitative easing (printing money), have pumped trillions of dollars into the global financial system. This led to an outbreak of borrowing by corporations in emerging markets, quadrupling their debt from $4 trillion in 2004 to over $18 trillion by 2014. This money is now heading out of the emerging economies and in the process crippling them.

Stock market and financial panic

The current panic sell-off on stock markets in China, Europe, US, and including Australia has seen trillions of dollars wiped out from global share values. As a result of investors getting spooked over fears of the world economy the Australian share market has lost more than $40 billion so far this year.

Money has flooded out of stocks with any trace of risk causing a 'bear market' of panic selling in stock markets worldwide; and Australia's stock market has fallen quicker and more violently than others in the developed world.

'Australian banks' are not shielded from the contamination of tumbling oil prices onto their financial accounts as energy companies become crippled by debt.

It ought to be remembered that 'Australian banks', especially the big four would've collapsed during the 2008 GFC had the Federal Government  not come to their rescue and guaranteed them. They were unable to refinance their overseas loans because the global credit markets had come to a standstill.

The 2008 crisis saw Australian banks borrow $120 billion at the taxpayers’ expense. This was the biggest bailout of an institution in our history.

In September last year overseas borrowings by Australian banks had reached 53 per cent of GDP. Obviously they refuse to learn any lessons from the 2008 GFC.

Now Banks and hedge funds are gripped with terror and alarm as they are forced to confront week after week of collapsing share prices and asset values. Close to 1000 hedge funds in the US were closed down in 2015.

When the US Federal Reserve lifted interest rates above zero whilst the dollar rose, commodity (oil and gas) prices crumpled putting huge a burden on energy companies and economies. Then rivals Japan and some European countries went into negative with their interest rates.

Now central banks are at war with each other by pushing their currencies lower to get whatever trade advantage they can with exports. No doubt central banks and governments will be having serious but covert meetings haggling over what to do with capitalism's latest anarchic economic crisis.

The shift to negative interest rates, as has quantitative easing, will inevitably damage the global banking system. The Royal Bank of Scotland’s advice (which was scoffed at early in January this year by the financial media) to its clients to “sell everything..." and that 2016 could be a “cataclysmic year” appears now to be wise counsel.

Day of reckoning for the destruction of production

The Bank of International Settlements (the banker's bank) contends that there has not been enough wiping off the value of useless investment, what Marxists call de-valorisation. In other words the unthinkable is our reality; the present economic crisis is in fact the implosion of the capitalist system.

The BIS has stated that there needs to be a day of reckoning where huge wipe off from assets and investments needs to occur; which in effect means the closing down of plants all over the world. For example China has excess capacity in steel-making that is larger than the entire steel-making capacity of Japan.

Up till now governments' economic policies have been the postponement of the day of reckoning, because they are politically scared of what the social and political consequences of such actions will be.

However, from the capitalist point of view, there is no alternative to the BIS plan of recovery but to slash government debts and wipe out excess capacity - close down firms, plants, machinery etc. What has happen to Greece will now occur throughout the world!

The free trade agreements with Japan, Korea and China and the Multinational corporations investment protection agreement called, the Trans Pacific Partnership, are a way of forcing through  de-valorisation i.e. the wiping out of excess firms, plants, machinery etc.

Wave of job losses follow the day of reckoning firm closures

A wave of job cuts world-wide demonstrates the declining depression-like conditions of the global economy. In the US 40,000 coal mining jobs have gone; Wal-Mart slashed 10,000 jobs and 154 stores; and the freight transport industry is in a slump.

Here in Australia whilst the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reports an unemployment rate of 5.8 per cent (727,000) the Roy Morgan survey for January gives a more realistic unemployment rate of 10.3 per cent (2,575,000).

Two major retailers have collapsed: Dick Smith Electronics has placed in jeopardy 3,300 jobs and 393 stores; Woolworths announced it will exit its Masters hardware business, threatening 7,000 jobs and 63 stores.

Last year Chevron cut 1,200 jobs in Australia. In January Clive Palmer's Queensland Nickel Yabulu refinery closed with 237 jobs gone.

The loss of jobs in the mining industry in Australia is never ending:

CBH Resources - 116 jobs

Panoramic Resources - 50 jobs

Mincor Resources - 90 jobs

Independence Group - 28 jobs

Newcrest Mining - 100 jobs

Oz Minerals - 100 jobs

ANGLO American - 245 jobs

Other industries are also carrying out job cuts:

Freight carrier Pacific National - 46 jobs

Ship builder BAE - 325 jobs

Ship repairer Forgacs - 150 jobs

Auto parts manufacturer SMR Automotive - 140 jobs

Banking giant Barclays - 80 jobs

Bank of Queensland - 50 jobs

Lion Beer, Spirits and Wine Australia - 39 jobs

The University of Western Australia - 300 jobs

 CSIRO - 120 jobs

Arrium (formerly OneSteel) – hundreds forecast along with possible closure of Whyalla steelworks

The federal government - 700 jobs

WA government - 1,163 jobs

Only a different mode of production can overcome the economic crisis and threat of war

It is obvious that finance capital through its central bankers and capitalist governments has only expanded and intensified the continual waves of economic crisis that it inflicts on the world. They are only interested in the accumulation of capital for themselves and consequently like mad men pour cash into financial markets sparking off speculation and parasitic mergers and fire-sale buy outs.

This finally brings about the day of reckoning of widespread destruction of productive activity (wipe out excess capacity - close down firms, plants, machinery) and job and welfare losses to the working class.

The escalating global economic crisis additionally risks igniting the geopolitical pressures and the drive to war by the US and other imperialist countries.

The US military strategy of the 'Asia Pivot' and the conflicts it has sown in the Ukraine and Syria are pointed directly at blunting competition from China and Russia.

As Marx pointed out long ago only a different mode of production, socialism then communism, will remove the exploitation and oppression that the working class has to endure under capitalism. However this requires that the working class wrest state power from the capitalists and imperialists, and destroy all the capitalist state’s functions and structures.

The state’s role in a capitalist society is to enforce upon the worker the task “…to satisfy the need of existing values for valorization (i.e. creating growth of and for capital). In contrast to capitalism, communism is“…the inverse situation, in which the objective wealth is there to satisfy the worker’s own need for development.”

The humane purpose of communism is that “…the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

Commonwealth Bank scam of customers is a good reason to nationalise the banks

Vanguard August 2014 p. 4
Max O.

The recently reported fact that thousands of Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) customers lost savings during the global financial crisis, between 2006 and 2010, after advisers misled them into buying risky products, fabricated documents and forged signatures, demonstrates once again the parasitic, decadent and moribund nature of capitalism.

Marx once remarked the reprehensible purpose of money: “Money is therefore not only the object but also the fountainhead of greed."

Banksters of greed

The fallout over the CBA's nefarious financial scams was brought to light by a Senate select committee report that recommended an independent inquiry into a financial planning scandal at the CBA.

It also charged the Australian Securities Investment Commission (ASIC) for being a timid corporate watchdog that failed to act over the CBA's fraudulent, forgery and financially scamming its customers millions of dollars.

The Senate committee report also made the accusation that included allegations of a cover-up and that the bank's ability to address compensation issues was compromised.

The Senate committee stated in a damming 519-page report that: "... confidence in ASIC's ability to monitor the CBA's ... compensation process is severely undermined. The CBA's credibility in the matter is so compromised that responsibility for the compensation process should be taken away from the bank."

State backs the banksters

Whilst the Coalition government has commenced royal commissions into the former Labor government's home insulation scheme and the 'trade union corruption' allegations, it definitely shies away from an inquiry into this banking scandal.

Finance minister Mathias Cormann gave preference to Senator Bushby’s minority report and made the weasel comment, that he (Bushby) made a "very persuasive argument that yet another inquiry might not be the best way forward."

Likewise Prime Minister Abbott prevaricated, stating, "We do have an inquiry into the financial governance going on now and we want to ensure that investors are as safe as they can be in a market economy."

The obvious man to head this inquiry into the banking system is the one with the biggest conflict of interest, and that is none other than David Murray, the former CEO of the CBA.

Marx long ago argued that as capitalism concentrated wealth into the hands of the rich and impoverished the masses, it would cause economic crisis and intensify class conflict: "Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole."

Falling rate of profit

To overcome the tendency to the fall in the rate of profit and when capital experiences crises Marx observed: " If the rate of profit falls, there follows, on the one hand, an exertion of capital in order that the individual capitalists, through improved methods, etc., may depress the value of their individual commodity below the social average value and thereby realise an extra profit at the prevailing market-price. On the other hand, there appears swindling and a general promotion of swindling by recourse to frenzied ventures with new methods of production, new investments of capital, new adventures, all for the sake of securing a shred of extra profit which is independent of the general average and rises above it."

More and more capital relies on profiteering from investing in financial instruments, such as derivatives and a plethora of other risky products to fleece money off ordinary people as oppose to accumulating profit from the process of production.

This swindling through financial speculation, called financialisation, postponed the serious economic crisis that arose in the 1980's and has now compounded the depth of our current crisis.

Looting keeps capital afloat

Whilst capitalism has so far deferred the fatal economic crisis, each crisis is getting bigger and bigger.

These flagrant instances of looting and fraud by the banking and financial system are now essential to the survival of capitalism. The old capitalist proverb that, "Money makes the world go round" should be updated to; "Illegal money stops the (capitalist) world from tipping over!"

The immorality that comes out of the financial system reflects the rottenness of the capitalist profit system.

Sooner or later the expropriators will need to be expropriated and the banking and financial system nationalised under people's state ownership.