The United States is hoping to stave off a general collapse of the currency system, writes Barry Sheppard. This threat gives the capitalist class extortion power to insist that the government bail out the big banks.
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Banks are hated for good reasons: they rip off and abuse ordinary customers while helping their richest clients spirit away ill-gotten gains. They help keep the poor poor while making the rich even richer, writes Peter Boyle.
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Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg's announcement of yet another inquiry into the banking sector is just the latest attempt by the Coalition government to pretend it is doing something about the crimes of the Big Four banks.
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Pork-barrel politics and scare tactics have dominated the final weeks of the “longest election campaign ever”. Voters in marginal seats have been warned to “vote carefully”, to not “waste your vote” or “risk a protest vote” which might result in — shock horror “the chaos of a hung parliament”. We have had “tradies” in political ads trying to convince workers that the Liberal National Party (LNP) is their party, and Labor trying to convince the public that they have “rediscovered” labor values. -
Melbourne climate activists staged an “End of Coal” parade on August 13. They were celebrating the Commonwealth Bank’s decision to cancel its involvement with Adani’s Galilee coal proposals. They called on all Australia’s Banks to stop investing in fossil fuels.
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“Billionaire hedge fund managers have called on Puerto Rico to lay off teachers and close schools so that the island can pay them back the billions it owes,” on the debt crisis facing the United States' Caribbean colony. -
In its latest federal budget, the Tony Abbott Liberal-National government announced the setting up of a $5 billion “concessional loan facility” called the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility. The proposal has been condemned by environmental and Aboriginal rights groups.
