From "Too Big To Fail" to "Systemically Important Businesses"The imperialist oligarchs have promoted yet another term to explain their plunder of state revenue to pay the rich. During the last economic crisis in 2008, they professed the necessity to funnel state/public money into private industrial and financial monopolies because they were "too big to fail." If their industrial and financial global empires were to fail, the world as we know it would collapse and something unthinkable would replace it. The unthinkable for the imperialist oligarchs would be their loss of control and privilege to exploit the working class and a possible resurgence of a mass movement of working people towards a pro-social direction and aim for the economy.
With even greater wealth concentrated in fewer hands, the oligarchs became ever bolder and more violent in their competition to plunder the world with war preparations, sanctions, boycotts, blockades, interference, regime change, regional wars and threats of wider wars amongst themselves for power. The imperialist world became exposed and vulnerable to a global health crisis for which it was unprepared, laying bare its underlying economic contradiction between a modern socialized economy and its outmoded private control by competing gangs of imperialist oligarchs interested primarily in their private wealth and power. During the pandemic, in country after country within the imperialist system of states, the health care and long-term care sectors have been exposed as incapable of dealing with the public health crisis. In addition, an economic crisis has exploded and those imperialist enterprises deemed too big to fail in 2008 and propped up with state funds are back begging for more public money to save their private empires, this time with the moniker "systemically important and viable businesses." The imperialist think tank C.D. Howe Institute writes in its pandemic communiqué #5: Viable Businesses Need Access to Capital[1]: "The group's focus at the meeting was on the recovery phase and how to ensure companies with viable business models can make the types of investments needed to adapt to the changing structure of the economy, avoid unsustainable debt, and replenish their working capital.... "There are steps governments can take to facilitate business access to both short-term working capital and new sources of patient capital without propping up businesses that would have failed anyway, or whose models will not work post-pandemic. [...] "On this front, the Bank of Canada has supported financial institutions with plenty of liquidity through the pandemic. Therefore, as long as companies have viable business models, financial institutions should be there to help companies restore their working capital.... "Members did feel that some companies are likely too systemically important, as judged by their knock-on effects in the rest of the economy, to be able to go through the bankruptcy and insolvency process. The challenge is determining which companies are truly systemically important. "Governments need to be clear on the criteria they will use to make this determination.... "Actual government intervention might be necessary in the more immediate term. One option for government intervention involves incentivized loans, where government provides favourable terms to companies in exchange for them making specific investments.... [Another option would be] government or Crown lenders taking a mezzanine debt or preferred equity position, which would allow companies themselves to determine the appropriate investment.... While no perfect option exists, members did favour the preferred equity approach. The group ... noted that the government might want to consider tax measures that facilitate the flow of patient equity capital.... "Policymakers and regulators should take the following steps to ensure capital is flowing efficiently to businesses best placed to drive economic growth during the recovery: Reduce regulatory impediments to capital flow; [Incent] more investment in companies and infrastructure projects that do not have public credit ratings; Encourage companies to take advantage of Canada's bankruptcy and insolvency programs, which give companies with viable business models a second chance through negotiations with creditors; Be upfront about the criteria that will determine systemically important Canadian businesses. If government is forced to invest, lean towards preferred equity." The imperialist oligarchs fashion their pay-the-rich schemes to "systemically important and viable businesses" and others for the lofty purpose of supporting the jobs of ordinary working people and saving the economy from collapse. Companies need workers to operate, whether they are "systemically important businesses" or not, and if the largest companies collapse then this heralds the collapse of the broader economy and the need for public enterprise with a new pro-social aim and direction.
Working people need to pose for themselves the question: why are public funds and government institutions supporting this aim and passion for private profit? Doing so is precisely the "business as usual" which must be ended if a way forward is to be found for society. This obsession stands in opposition to nation-building, it stands in opposition to moving the country forward in a new direction to solve the problems and social relations of a modern socialized economy of industrial mass production to meet the needs of the people and to humanize the social and natural environment. For the imperialist oligarchs the "systemically important businesses" are crucial for their private interests because they own and control them. They are not viewed as crucial for the broad public interests and nation-building. The structure and aim of the private businesses, the social relations with their workers and the state institutions supporting the whole are what they do not want to change. They are terrified of change to bring in new "systemically important and viable businesses" with a new aim and direction that serve the people and nation-building. They are terrified of the working people and any questioning of the unjust one-sided social relation with them, which centres on buying workers' capacity to work so their "systemically important businesses" can function and the imperialist system can continue expropriating the value workers produce and block any resolution of its internal contradictions to open a path forward.
The working class cannot allow the imperialist oligarchy to escape this crisis without challenging its authority. Obviously, the ruling elite are not going to change a system that gives them private profit, privilege and the power to exploit. They are determined to keep the status quo, to keep business as usual and not allow the working class to just waltz in and take over. The working class has to bring in change through its own organized efforts and actions, through determined struggles to claim what belongs to it by right, which includes the right to determine the direction of those economic and political affairs that affect their lives. The "systemically important businesses" must serve the people and nation-building and not the narrow private interests of the global rich. That much must be made clear and enforced. Canada and the rest of the imperialist world need a new aim and direction and the organized working people have the social responsibility to bring it into being. Note1. Members of the Monetary and Financial Measures Working Group of the C.D. Howe Institute include: - David Dodge, Co-Chair, former Governor of the
Bank of
Canada
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The pay-the-rich
schemes over the years to hand out state
funds to those entities deemed "too big to fail" and others
consolidated even further the power and control of the global
oligarchs leading to greater concentration of wealth in fewer
hands and growing poverty and unresolved social problems. The
diversion of state funding to GM, the banks and other global
industrial and financial powers during the last decades led to
starving of funds for social programs, including importantly the
health care and long-term care sectors. The rich became richer
and the poor poorer and more vulnerable worldwide, and the
anarchy of production and exploitation of the working people
intensified.
The imperialists
want working people to ignore the aim of the
systemically important businesses, which receive public money,
and the private investors who profit from the value the workers
produce. The aim of the "systemically important businesses" is
not nation-building and the security and well-being of the
people; the aim is to expropriate as much value as possible for
those in control and ownership. Those in control or ownership of
"systemically important businesses" in Canada are more than
likely not even residents of the country. They may be equity
owners living on their private island or powerful shareholders in
New York, London, Frankfurt or possibly Toronto. They are
obsessed with the return on their private investment within the
"systemically important businesses" they own.
Of note is C.D.
Howe Institute writing of the importance to
"Encourage companies to take advantage of Canada's bankruptcy and
insolvency programs." These cruel programs target the working
class, its jobs, savings and pensions. Workers in Canada have
bitter experience with "Canada's bankruptcy and insolvency
programs," in particular the 