Workers Solidarity Movement

Today the European Central Bank (ECB) gave out 530 billion euros in 3-year term loans to the private banks of the Eurozone. Together with the 490 billion they doled out last December, that's over 1 trillion euros. If pigs could fly and politicians never lied and every household in the country was magically able to pay the hated Household Tax, the total receipt would be 160 million euro. At that rate, it would take 6,250 years to amount to 1 trillion. It would also take 20 years to amount to the 3.2 billion euros the state are handing over to the Anglo bondholders on the 31st March coming.

 

So the next time government ministers appear on TV, wringing their hands saying, sure we know it's awful unpopular, but we really have no alternative, we just have to pay this tax, otherwise the world will fall apart for want on money, remember that the ECB can create thousands of years worth, at the click of a button, whenever the mood suits them.

 

It suits them at the moment because until the ECB unleashed this tsunami of free loans in December, the interest rates on Spanish and Italian government bonds were reaching the levels that forced the bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal in the last two years. As the ECB and the Franco-German axis decided that Italy and Spain were "too big to bail" they decided to get the ECB to lend to money to buy Italian and Spanish bonds to the Eurozone banking system. The idea being that the banks would use the ECB cash to buy the distressed bonds and make the difference between the virtually zero interest they were paying the ECB and the interest rate the governments in question would pay from the proceeds of inflicting austerity cuts on their people.

 

The whole process is a simple transmission belt that exports the losses made by all the Eurozone banks to the people of the Zone's periphery, via the government's balance sheet. Of course, as austerity policies force our economies into a downward cycle of depression, the banks losses will increase, so we will go around this circle again, until we find a way of putting a stop to it. That way is non-payment. We must refuse to pay for the losses of the banks and the 1% who hide behind them and bondholder anonymity. Smashing the Household tax is the first step in drawing that line.