Because the Covid-19 pandemic destroys incomes, the center class is pressured to pay exorbitant bank card charges. How for much longer are the debt-serfs prepared to get fleeced by bankers and politicians brain-frozen on designer ice cream?
The repeated rinsing of taxpayers has hollowed out the UK and US center class, and continued polarization will certainly finish in civil unrest.
Covid-19 has revealed how 30 years of neoliberal politics by the ruling elite have failed. This world pandemic, which has killed practically 200,000 individuals and contaminated greater than 2.5 million, has set off a series response inflicting simultaneous worldwide supply-and-demand shock waves.
And what are the UK and the US governments doing to assist peculiar folks throughout this disaster?
Not a lot.
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Whereas too-big-to-fails, airways and different establishments with a historical past of abusive and reckless governance obtain taxpayer-subsidized bailouts, low-interest charge loans and/or zero-interest charge loans, peculiar persons are pressured to pay an exorbitant quantity to borrow cash on a bank card.
For instance, RBS’s Reward Black card expenses common prospects an annual charge of £84 and a whopping 37.1 % APR. Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin-branded Cash balance-transfer card expenses 27.9 % APR after 24 months.
And what might be worse than this?
Permitting cash lenders to prey on society’s most weak. Within the midst of file unemployment, cash lenders are charging 1,575 % APR or extra on short-term high-cost loans.
It appears the modifications made by the Monetary Conduct Authority (FCA) in 2015, in addition to the enforcement of these modifications, are pathetically insufficient. If this authorities desires to create jobs, it ought to create a division to handle loans for many who want them essentially the most.
Boris Johnson? Rishi Sunak? The subsequent Tory PM? Can any of you hear me? The UK authorities should ban usury, and ban it now!
Bailouts for billionaires, buybacks and bankers
In recession after recession, the Federal Reserve, the European Central Financial institution and the Financial institution of England proceed to bail out banks and establishments that made reckless lending selections. And understanding that the central banks shall be there to catch them, these establishments proceed to behave recklessly.
Bear in mind 2009? UK taxpayers had been pressured to bail out the Royal Financial institution of Scotland (RBS). RBS had been run by Fred ‘the Shred’ Goodwin, who oversaw foolhardy share buybacks and buyouts, was dubbed the “most conceited man within the metropolis of London” and was knighted in 2004 for “companies to banking.” Though the Queen annulled his honours in 2012 because of this catastrophe, the Shred nonetheless departed a rich man after the credit score disaster, whereas taxpayers misplaced billions, and stay on the hook for RBS. As of 2018, the ‘authorities’ – aka taxpayers – nonetheless owned 62 % of RBS’s shares. Poor Shred.
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Throughout the pond, American Airways, below CEO Doug Parker, spent practically US$ 13 billion on share buybacks as a substitute of strengthening its steadiness sheet. Parker’s horrible company governance noticed him pocket US$ 150 million. And but, in 2020, the airline is in search of an estimated US$ 10 billion in taxpayer-backed bailouts (after already having acquired a US$ four.1 billion grant and, final week, a low-interest charge mortgage of US$ 1.7 billion). Poor Doug.
Poverty, payday, pasta and politicians
After which there’s the speaker of the US Home of Representatives, who’s the poster youngster for tone-deaf politicians. Pelosi withheld billions of of help from small companies throughout America and the CARES Act trillion-dollar bailouts she championed haven’t benefitted the lots beneath the poverty line.
However what does Pelosi care? Whereas her constituents undergo – poverty, crime, homelessness, and unemployment ranges have all skyrocketed in her Congressional district – Pelosi exhibits off the intensive designer ice-cream assortment saved in her US$ 30,000 Sub-Zero fridge at her multi-million greenback mansion in one in every of Northern California’s fanciest gated communities.
However don’t fear, Pelosi nonetheless has her eyes on the prize – she is backing zero % curiosity loans and bailouts that may assist billionaire donors and bankers.
Sadly, she appears to have forgotten in regards to the common taxpayer. Pelosi’s insurance policies enable Citibank’s American Airways bank card to cost the identical taxpayers who had been pressured to fund bailouts of each Citibank and American Airways as much as 30 % APR.
The place are the bailouts for the common citizen, Nancy?
A US$ 1,200 one-off cost? Crumbs. Return to your designer ice cream and vodka.
And it’s no totally different within the UK. The Financial institution of England, the Treasury and the politicians have performed nothing to assist deliver down excessive poverty ranges, that are estimated to impression 15 million individuals.
The UK is a developed nation and, in some ways, a mannequin nation that I’m proud to name my dwelling. Nevertheless, our authorities can and should get its priorities straight. Quite than utilizing taxpayer funds to bail out banks run by scum just like the Shred, politicians ought to strengthen the weak restrictions on payday-loan rates of interest and truly implement these restrictions. It’s utterly shameful that our authorities has performed nothing to guard us from firms promoting loans charging curiosity of 1,575 % APR to people who find themselves struggling to feed their kids and warmth their houses. How is that this allowed in 2020?
Whereas Pelosi pigs out on her designer ice cream (as does the Shred, though he no less than has the decency to take action in personal), the poor souls in poverty eat 70p pasta and rack up insurmountable debt on their 1,575 % payday loans. Because the empire fades, one recollects the “allow them to eat cake” second.
That remark didn’t work out very properly for Marie Antoinette.
