Immediate Socialist Solutions to the Crisis
Socialists have answers to the immediate crisis. We would:-
• provide sustainable and affordable social housing for rent. The £110 billion that the UK government spent on saving Northern Rock would alone pay for 2 million of such houses!
• take under common ownership all banks involved in house lending and turn their mortgages into cheap social loans
• take under common ownership the house building companies and task them with building social housing
• set in law the right to open the accounts of any financial firm or pension fund to inspect its investments and strategies
• set up an empowered independent body of people with market experience to regulate the financial markets. They would be elected and accountable to an assembly of individual investors and enforce stiff penalties and sanctions
• pass legislation to stop repossessions happening and turn the property involved in the loan into socially rented housing.
• raise the threshold for personal bankruptcies from £1,500 to £10,000
• freeze all food prices and bring the production, distribution and sale of food under social ownership - food meets a basic human need
• demand the Triad banks and their government write off the developing world’s debt
• end the massive expenditure on arms and nuclear weapons and use this to pay for social amenities and services
• raise taxation on the rich and on companies to provide the funds for
expanding social provision of housing and social services
The UK’s deflating housing bubble is just but one manifestation of an interconnected global financial and economical crisis. Socialists will have plenty of opportunities in the coming months and years to show there is a rational and humane alternative to the disease that is capitalism.