Saturday, June 16, 2012

AUSTRALIA WARNED ABOUT BANKS


It is doubtful that Bob Santamaria would have used such forthright language to describe Dr Evatt, the ALP, evil Communists and banks as this placard did in Wall Street, one of the many Occupy Wall Street demonstrations that continue throughout the US and overseas.
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Like so many influential players in Australia’s political recent past, the late Bartholomew Augustine Santamaria is now forgotten. A Catholic strongly opposed to Socialism and Communism, he was regarded as a hero by the Democratic Labor Party which split the Australian Labor Party. The son of Italian immigrants , he grew up in Mebourne .Late in life, however , he spoke out strongly about the dangers of monopoly capitalism. This, he repeatedly said, was as great a threat to civil society as communism. Santamaria was often heard on radio and TV and wrote for The Australian in the 1990s. He warned that the debt based credit creation system and private ownership of major banking institutions did not serve society and orderly government.

His comments about banks make interesting reading now that banks all over the world have had to be bailed out ,mostly with money from the public kitty with dire consequences for the social fabric .

Santamaria said international investment banks based in New York, London and Frankfurt had taken effective control of the levers of Australian economic policy since the 1970s. An interesting claim of his was that contractionary economic policies pursued in the "pro-market" 1990s had produced a long-term decline in real wages and forced mothers into the workforce, resulting in a breakdown of the family unit. The "market" was the greatest threat to the survival of the family and, more broadly, of Western civilization in the late 20th century, he added. UPCOMING : With Australian banks slugging customers for use of their bank cards, charging high overseas transaction fees and delaying the passing on of RBA interest cuts , a look at the warnings about banking down through the years .