A Guest Blog by John Parker Written in May 2011
Of course, since then, we've had the Greek Bail-Outs, but this is an interesting view, interesting because we see history repeating itself over and over again.
"Is the Spanish Street Protest the Start of the Broad Masses of the World Confronting Global Capitalism?
Spanish students have taken over a square in Madrid - hopefully this will be the start of the Western World telling the banking institutions and the IMF that the broad masses are not going to pay for their bungling greed, and that the broad masses are going to tell the banking systems and their representatives that the slate should be wiped clean and that the banking systems will all start again from scratch.
What they are saying on their placards is that they are not going to pay, but Spain on its own could not achieve that without global capitalism.
The banks say we're broke, you bailed us out. We've taken your money and you will now have to be poor for another decade, but we'll still pay ourselves bonuses out of your money.
The demonstators in Madrid hopefully will be followed by the rest of the Western broad mass of people and none of us will suffer for the banks' greed and bungling.
Spain, Greece and France are all shouting, but not together - it needs at least the Western European countries to be really demonstrating together and to tell the large corporations and their bganking stystems that we're not going to pay for their greed and mistakes, and hopefully the American people as well.
This happened in Central America, when Cuba led the Central American countries and told the IMF clearly that they were not paying, in the early 80's. And it was very funny because the IMF said"you've got to pay - have some more money from us so that you can do so." Then everything fell silent.
What are we to read into it? That the IMF didn't want other poor countries following suit?
They offered to lend the Cubans more money in order for the Cubans to keep up with their payments. We don't know whether Cuba accepted the money or not, because everything went silent. If Cuba had indeed borrowed more money, they would not have been able to repay it. The whole situation is ridiculous, because if they can't pay money that they owe, why lend them more? Only to prop up Capitalism which had collapsed.
We have never heard anything about it since then and don't know whether the Cuban debt was written off or not. A UK representative was at the IMF talks, but the Public weren't told of the outcome.
The reason we are currently in debt is because the financial institutions are lending the broad masses more when they can't repay it. It is a mere pretence of paying.
The IMF is like a bank, and the countries are like the bank customers. The countries are run and owned by large corporations and we don't have a say about how our financial affairs are run. But, for the first time, we see Western people - the Spanish unemployed - saying "we're not paying!"
For Spain to win, all the other countries would have to follow suit. I wonder what would happen - would it be like Cuba in the 1980's? Because of the silence, we don't know what happened. Would it be "Don't give us more money, we'll give you more money so that you can continue to pay us", or would the debt be written off?"
