Socialists – How They Unwittingly Serve the Interests Of The Mega Rich

The World Socialist Website carried this article.

And it is a prime display of ignorance and/or stupidity. Either that or the goal is to deliberately mislead the working class.

Let me break down the article

Rotting in its own criminality, the capitalist financial system produces ever more powerful arguments for its expropriation and reconstitution under public ownership and democratic control.

Prejudice without facts

The latest banking scandal, thus far focused on UK-based Barclays bank, goes to the heart of the global financial system. It provides a glimpse into the mechanisms by which a handful of giant banks rig the so-called “free market” to boost their profits and the fortunes of their executives and big investors. It is a process of economic plunder whose result is mass unemployment, poverty and ever increasing social inequality.

Untrue. The evidence shows that  LIBOR rigging has led to lower interest rates on mortgages and credit cards amongst other things.

This bankers’ conspiracy has a very real and vast impact on the lives of ordinary people. Countless billions were effectively stolen from new homeowners or those with variable-rate mortgages, credit card holders, students with college loans, small business borrowers and other consumers when the banks priced the Libor rate artificially high. The Wall Street Journalnoted Thursday that an extra 0.3 percentage point would add $100 to the monthly payment on a $500,000 adjustable-rate mortgage.

Again, evidence shows the opposite

The lowballing of the Libor rate, on the other hand, cost bondholders who were not parties to the plot untold billions in lower returns. This includes state and local governments that have pared budget deficits by slashing jobs, wages and public services. It also includes pension funds and retirees with fixed investments, whose income was significantly lowered.

Anyone that has been hurt have the option to get compensation through the legal system. What has this got to do with Socialism?

The settlement with Barclays is a whitewash designed to let the bank’s top executives off the hook and conceal the complicity of governments and bank regulators in the scam. The $453 million fine is a fraction of the billions Barclays made illegally over the years by falsifying its loan rates to Libor and Euribor. It is a small price to pay for allowing what is, in essence, a criminal operation to continue.

The jury is still out on if the bank made money, but if it did, there is the legal system to right any wrongs, this has nothing to do with socialist ideals

Any claim that this cesspool of avarice and corruption can be “reformed” is the product of ignorance, self-delusion or deliberate deceit. The bankers who have committed fraud must be brought to justice and their illegally obtained fortunes seized and used to provide relief for the unemployed, the homeless and all those victimized by the financial mafia.

The fate of humanity, the rational and progressive allocation of resources to benefit the world’s inhabitants and prevent a further descent into social devastation, requires the expropriation of the banks by the working class and their transformation into public utilities democratically controlled and run in the interests of social need, not private profit.

The writer acknowledges government complicity in the apparent rigging and yet his solution is to give more control to government. His solution is to take control from one group of people and hand it to another group of people.

In short the solution put forward by the author is childish at best.

The author also chooses to ignore the legal option that is open to all parties who may have been effected, in short, any rigging of LIBOR has nothing to do with government. If a crime has been committed, the legal system will right any wrongs.

But the author chooses to ignore the existence of any legal system in the article as being a solution.

The article is much longer than the pieces I have highlighted here, it is worth reading, even if it is just to get a feel of the illogical hatred the writer has of the free market system.

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