Don't bash the banks - take them over

So while borrowing costs did rise the Commonwealth and other Australian banks have increased their lending rates to us by more than their increased borrowing costs. They gouged us, and continue to gouge us.

The banks margin over the cash rate has increased over the last2 years from 2 percent to 3 percent.

Effectively we workers as bank customers are paying for the impact of the GFC on banks' profit rates and the opportunity the GFC has presented to increase the banks' share of the surplus value the workers in the industrial sector create. Rather than take a hit to their profit, they have actually increased their return on investment since the GFC by screwing us for more.

The Labor Government response to the banks since they won power in 2007 has been to huff and puff publicly and do absolutely nothing.

Things are so bad that Labor inaction has made Opposition Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey look like a flaming radical with his nine point plan to ‘increase competition' in the banking sector.

Funny, Keating did that 25 years ago by allowing foreign banks into Australia. That's been a great success hasn't it? And in 1990 Labor's Kim Beasley oversaw the privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank supposedly to increase competition and drive interest rates down. Again, that's been a great success hasn't it?

The reality is that competition leads to monopoly.

In Australia the Government has a four pillars policy under which the Government mandates the continued existence of the big four banks - ANZ, NAB, Westpac and the Commonwealth. If that four pillars were to be lifted there would be three or perhaps even just two - big Australian banks.

Finance capital fight with other sections of capital for a share of the surplus value workers in productive sector of society produce. But the interdependence of finance and industrial capital makes any attempts to rein in the banks a problem for the effective functioning of capitalism as a whole. At he same time increased costs of doing business (i.e higher interest rates and tighter lending rules) impact on the other sectors of capital and reduce their activity. They slow them down.

Since finance capital depends ultimately on the productive process it cannot consciously destroy that sector. But its own drive for a greater share of the bucket of surplus value forces it to attempt to steal more and more of our expropriated labour from the other vultures on the bones of our wealth production. It is a patient with a sick phobia to attack its very essence over and other again. It is feeding on its own soul.

The banks rule, not Labor. The ALP managed capitalism and so must give in to the banks or at best very slightly restrict their profit gouging.

Hockey isn't about attacking the banks, he is about making them more powerful. Competition won't solve the problems the banks highlight - the lack of real democracy in Australia, the rule of the oligopoly of big business, and the passing on of the GFC to workers.