- by David Matters
- The Guardian
- Issue #2042
Reserve Bank of Australia. Photo: Ché Lydia Xyang – flickr.com (CC BY-SA 3.0)
The Reserve Bank continues to launch an assault on the working class. The fallacy that interest rate rises are going to do anything other than impoverish millions of Australians while enriching the financiers has to be exposed.
The inflation we are experiencing is the result of the huge increase in expenditure on war and the aggressive foreign policy of our governments in pursuing war agendas in the interests of these same financiers that are currently making record profits from weapons sales and the ratcheting up of gas and oil prices.
The other result of this policy is to forcibly close some businesses and cause a rise in unemployment. The capitalist class is concerned that there is a shortage of labour and that this might result in greater wage rises, so they are trying to slow economic activity. Slower economic activity will throw more out of work.
The interest rate rise also puts thousands of Australians at risk of homelessness. It is time that the government stops acting in the interests of the billionaires and starts to provide more public investment in housing.
The current approach of deliberately shrinking the economy through higher interest rates is bloating bank profits while causing untold suffering and misery to working Australians.