Financial crisis, the banks & public sector cuts
In 2008 the world learnt that the banks had gambled away hundreds of billions and as a result the global financial system was in crisis. Many of the world’s major economies were plunged into recession. Millions of women and men have since lost their jobs and their livelihoods as a result of the banking crisis and the subsequent global recession.
For the 1.4 billion people already living in extreme poverty around the world they were hit the hardest. Millions lost their job because of the global recession with the drop in demand for exports. While lots of developing country workers lost their job they also suffered as many are not able to access social security and their wages are too low to save money for when they aren’t able to work.
In the UK, War on Want helped to found the Put People First Coalition that campaigned to reform the financial system and proposed an alternative system that would redress this balance.
Unfortunately many of the world leaders have responded by trying to preserve the very system that is responsible for the crisis. The UK Governments has spent a staggering £1.2 trillion of public money to bail out the UK banks without demanding the banks pay it back or that bankers stop rewarding themselves billions in bonuses, yet the poorest have received little help in their struggle to make ends meet.
With its refusal to accept anything but ‘light touch’ regulation of financial capital, the UK government is determined to return to business as usual. Instead the government has decided to punish the poorest by slashing billions in public spending. The planned cuts to public spending are expected to result in over half million jobs being lost including those of thousands of teachers, nurses, doctors, police and fire-fighters.
There is though a clear alternative to the cuts to public services and that is to close the £120 billion tax gap by cracking down on the large scale tax dodging committed by corporations and wealthy individuals, War on Want is leading the campaign for tax justice and a new system to replace the failed ideology of free market capitalism.
