Video: A World in Crisis

Scant attention has been paid to the 80th anniversary of the October 1929 Wall Street Crash. Preoccupied with their own present devastating global crisis, the moneybags, the capitalists, can hardly repeat their theme of yesterday – “it can never happen again” – when dealing with 1929. How much of it really has happened again? And what are the underlying causes of today’s crisis?

Recently engaged in a round of backslapping, the leaders of Europe suggested that we were turning the corner out of the crisis. In Ireland despite all the evidence to the contrary, the government is still trying to talk up the prospect of a ‘deal’ on the bank debt. But on the ground, the crisis is worsening, austerity is destroying people’s lives and the economies of Europe. In the first of two articles on the future of the EU, first published on Irish Left Review, Paul Murphy MEP examines the immediate prospects for the eurozone crisis in the next months.

Big corporations are accumulating massive cash hoards. Despite record profits, there is a dearth of investment in production. Corporate surpluses, moreover, are linked to public-sector deficits. Cash hoarders should be subject to an immediate levy on idle capital to finance public works and reduce mass unemployment.