Press Release No. 13/2010 Huber: “Financial market capitalism has run its course”

Frankfurt am Main – On Labor Day, IG Metall President Berthold Huber sharply criticized financial market capitalism. “Financial market capitalism has run its course. But that doesn’t seem to have sunk in at all with the economic and political elites,” Huber said in his May 1 speech on Saturday in Frankfurt. These elites are carrying on as if nothing had happened at all. Rating agencies, for example, which until recently would have given top ratings to junk bonds, are now passing judgment on the future of democratic states. Banks that were bailed out by governments now want to profit from loans to Greece with double-digit interest rates.
“This is where EU aid is needed, not standing by and hesitating—as the German federal government tends to do,” criticized the IG Metall chairman. To date, he noted, governments have not enacted any laws against financial market speculation. Nor have the causes of the crisis been seriously investigated, nor have those responsible been held accountable. “A federal government is not elected to ward off harm from banks and financial speculators; a federal government is elected to ward off harm from the people.”

The union leader warned against continuing neoliberal policies that destroy the welfare state and deprive people of their rights. “That is why we need a fundamental change of course, not old wine in new wineskins,” Huber demanded. It is no act of nature that the low-wage sector and precarious employment are growing, and that there are more and more millionaires and billionaires in the world. On the other hand, however, more and more people around the globe are forced to live in poverty and misery. “It is a man-made development. And because these policies are made by people, people can also change them,” Huber emphasized. “We will fight back against the deprivation of people’s rights; these policies must have no future.”