Bringing the fight to the bankers

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Lead Editorial

23 November 2022
Vol. 24 No. 47

A political grenade was lobbed at the “Money Power” by Senator Gerard Rennick in the Australian Senate on 22 November. The Senator made it known that the Australian population would not stand for the closure of banks and shuttering of cash access occurring across the nation at a rapid pace, and instead fight for a People’s Post Office Bank.

Rennick slammed the closure of 72 bank branches in just six weeks as “an issue of national concern”, naming and shaming Westpac for the planned closure of its Coober Pedy (SA) branch next February, leaving people to travel 540 km to the next closest bank.

“Branch closures”, he warned, “strangle communities economically, socially, and mentally. …

“Westpac and the other banks enjoy enormous public financial support—they should repay that support by maintaining banking services in the regional communities. …

“This is why we need a government-owned postal bank to provide banking and insurance service to regional centres and small businesses. A postal bank can act as a bulwark against the cartel-like behaviour of the big banks.”

This intersects a much bigger fight. The banks are but a cog in the implementation of a global policy regime designed to suppress the development of nations by asphyxiating the flow of credit. This policy was engineered by British bankers at the close of World War I to smother workers’ hard-won rights in the cradle, fearing they would lead to the subversion of private financial power. The intervention of governments to supercharge economies to defend themselves during the war provided a platform for workers to achieve a powerful position in the productive sector. State economic guidance was overturned with the lie that only if “the market” were allowed to run free could impersonal economic laws work their magic to provide a prosperous future. Economic decision-making must be made by independent technocrats, economists beholden to those esoteric principles, not democratically elected MPs who might be influenced by election cycles, i.e. by the people. This crushed the people of Europe under one or another variety of Fascism and set the stage for WWII, but elevated transnational bankers to the position they occupy today. This history is documented in a just-released book, The Capital Order: How economists invented austerity and paved the way to fascism, by Clara Mattei, Assistant Economics Professor at the New School for Social Research, New York.

Last night, in a paean to this austerity regime, Reserve Bank of Australia chief Philip Lowe warned that inflation would only become harder to control henceforth, which means continued rate rises and little chance for wage increases. That means hard times to come—unless we overturn the current financial order. Yet the RBA’s priority of inflation targeting was never endorsed by parliamentary, i.e. democratic, process as documented in the Citizens Party’s submission to the ongoing RBA Inquiry. It was always targeted at blocking national credit and development! (Almanac)

Legendary MP King O’Malley, along with other Old Labor leaders, recognised the Money Power’s game in crystal clear terms. In a five-hour parliamentary speech on national banking on 30 September 1909, he showed how the lack of a National Bank and Postal Bank would smother the development of local communities and prevent the rise of a truly sovereign nation. (Back page) O’Malley declared “That a banking system, causing constant fluctuations in value by varying rates of interest, is no more suitable as a medium of finance … than an elastic yardstick is fit for a measure of cloth; that justice requires uniformity of value.” Our present “private corporation banking system”, he said, “rests on a fictitious basis” of assisting speculators and financial magnates, which “enables them to extort large sums annually from the small and weak producers and businesspeople, thus keeping them poor”.

The ACP is getting traction for an inquiry into this corrupt banking system—bringing the fight to the very heart of the Money Power once again!

In this issue:

• Demand real inquiry into banks crushing communities
• Calls for a real inquiry into bank branch closures
• The decision to go to war must lie with parliament
• Most of world refuses to align with war party
• The Kuomintang retreat to Taiwan - Part Three
• Documentation: The KMT’s corruption
• Biden Administration’s ‘Nuclear Posture’
• Banking shutdown an issue of ‘national concern’!
• Senator Rennick: Westpac abandoning Coober Pedy
• King O’Malley tells how to create a nation of producers
• ALMANAC: A bank for the nation - Part I
• Appendix 1: What’s in China’s monetary tool kit?

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