International Socialists (CWI Scotland)

£950,000 is a hellavu lot of money.  Especially when it comes on top off a salary of £1.2M. For a banker like Mr Stephen Hester, the Chief Executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) it is an obscene amount.  Against the background of families who will not receive anything like that income in their lifetimes and when they are on the sharp end of attacks on wages, pensions and welfare benefits, it is particularly obscene.

’Everyone is really a hostage to the bond markets!’ This dramatic statement was made yesterday on Morning Ireland by Tony Connolly, the Europe Correspondent of Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTE. At last,’ I thought, ‘a correspondent in the establishment media is speaking truth to power. Now let’s have the questions begged by this forthright statement.’ And the questions ?

For a one-day public sector general strike

The ConDem government has taken a knife and plunged it deep into the living standards of millions upon millions of working and middle class people. Osborne, Cameron and Clegg – millionaires every one – have used the spending review to slash public spending to the bone.

Green Shoots or wishful thinking?

“We are gathering more and more evidence that the recession is over” - Alan Clarke - Economist BNP Paribas

Alistair Darling, the beleaguered New Labour chancellor, was widely derided for predicting that Britain’s worst recession since the 1930’s would be over by the end of 2009. Darling’s assertion in the March budget was filed into a similar category of self-delusion as those who claimed at the start of the First World War that the troops would be home by Christmas.

However, recently various economic forecasters have insisted that there are “green shoots of recovery” visible in the British economy and for that matter in the US and some other countries as well. They have cited as evidence the fact that UK industrial output rose by 0.2% in April and 0.1% in May  - the first increases since February 2008. This came hot on the heels of Halifax’s house price figures that found house prices rising in April and a report showing a return to some growth in the service sector.

Has globalisation gone into reverse?
Capitalist bailouts or socialist nationalisation?

Niall Mulholland, from The Socialist, weekly paper of the Socialist Party (CWI England and Wales)

As the world credit crunch and financial crisis spread to the real economy, government leaders gathered at a G-20 summit, last November, agreed not to raise barriers to trade and investment and not to go down the road of 'beggar thy neighbour' protectionism. Yet within hours of these solemn pledges, Russia announced planned increases in car tariffs, followed by similar actions by Vietnam, Russia and Brazil and several other G-20 countries.

These developments caused the Economist to declare "globalisation is suffering its biggest reversal in the modern era" and to warn that "economic nationalism" is threatening the world with depression (The Economist, London, 7/02/09).