The Great Bank Robbery: How Higher Rates Fill Bankers’ Pockets While Fleecing Rent and Mortgage Prisoners

Usury Unmasked: Bank of England’s Highwayman Tactics

So, the Bank of England has decreed that the rack must be tightened another notch, condemning multitudes to penury. This latest gratuitous increase in the rate of interest cements the supposition that our outwardly genteel central bankers are, in truth, no better than highwaymen garbed in black waiting to bob the worker before his pay can even buy the bacon.

While affecting a grave concern for the evils of inflation, the Bank’s desperate jiggery-pokery only compounds the economic chaos for which their own reckless policies are culpable. Far from containing the plague of rising prices and pushing inflation down, all these savage jumps in interest have chiefly done is to punish the blameless renters and mortgage prisoner whose wages stagnate while allowing profiteers to grow plump.

Not that our modern usurers are content with the existing scale of their depredations. No, the screeching from Threadneedle Street will not abate until interest rates eclipse their historic zenith, attained during the benighted monetarism of the blessed Margaret’s reign. Thus are the moneylenders bleating for the pound of flesh closest to the heart of the economy, heedless of its enfeeblement.

While the Bank of England attempts to douse the flames of inflation with its rate hikes, it seems oblivious to the inferno that energy companies are stoking.

It doesn’t matter how high interest rates rise while ever extortionate energy bills hit our homes and business prices will rise.

But as ever, it is the City of London which bays loudest for harsh medicine to be forced down the craw of middle England. Our burgeoning financial Gomorrah quakes with greed at the prospect of fatter margins from higher rates. Each uptick in interest sends a fresh cascade of lucre gushing into bankers’ pockets, the dirty torrent swelling behind the genteel facades of the Square Mile.

In a sobering paradox, interest rate rises have propelled bank profits to unprecedented heights, reaching nearly £30 billion for the first half of this year. Yet, while families’ finances across the nation are relentlessly crushed under the weight of those very rate hikes.

Labour Heartlands

Coincidently the same shareholders that gain from high energy bills, just so happen to be the same shareholders that gain from high interest rates.

Nonetheless, market dogma vehemently discourages any audacious investigation into the justifiability of money minters amassing Midas-like fortunes, all the while burdening households under the weight of debt. To dare question the perceived divine wisdom of the market’s invisible hand is seen as sacrilege. However, the reality exposes a stark truth – there is no invisible hand, only the undeniable presence of insatiable greed.

Energy Cartels Fuel Inflation, Not Workers’ Wages

Until the real culprits of this inflation crisis are stopped, we will keep paying…

The crux of our current plight lies not in the aspirations of the common man, it’s not the working class asking for more than their due, it’s not the fact we ask for wages to match our labour but rather in the insatiable greed of energy cartels, whose extortionate fuel bills fuel the flames of inflation. Unfortunately, the government’s reluctance to act emboldens these oligarchs, allowing them to maintain an iron grip on the economy’s windpipe.

The heart of the matter lies not in the whims of monetary policy, but rather in the opportunistic behaviour of energy companies.

The UK financial services sector will be £2 billion better off in the next year as a result of today’s decision to increase the Bank of England base rate by 0.25%. They did nothing to earn it. The UK now looks like a giant welfare system for its banks and bankers.

— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) August 3, 2023

Even the progressive thinktank, like IPPR, are sounding the alarm, cautioning that the Bank’s tightening of the monetary screws may be too much for the already weakening UK economy. voices like Carsten Jung, a senior economist at IPPR, goes as far as suggesting that the rates could be a full percentage point higher than necessary, making the Bank’s actions appear excessive.

Indeed, the signs of economic frailty are becoming evident. The labour market is showing signs of slowdown, and productivity is on a downward spiral. It is increasingly apparent that the Bank of England may have already gone overboard in their quest to curb inflation.

The consequences of such an aggressive interest rate hike are far-reaching, and they affect both households and businesses alike. Striking at 5.25 per cent, the Bank’s move appears to be causing more harm than good. Such a drastic measure may well be overshooting the mark, driving the economy into further turmoil. But we all know the market and those brokers that bet make their money in the rough seas where waves peak and trough while the rest of drown without the buoyancy of capital to keep us afloat.

The IEA was also concerned, saying: “The UK economy is like a frog slowly being cooked by ever higher interest rates.

By raising the temperature further now, the Bank risks doing too much and, once again, only realising its mistake when it is too late.

And the TUC accused the government of hiding behind the Bank of England. The TUC fears that today’s rate rise will only heap more misery on households and businesses – and put many thousands more jobs and livelihoods at risk.

Hannah Dewhirst, head of campaigns at Positive Money, said: “We came out today to tell the Bank of England that we’ve had enough of senseless interest rate rises.

Rate rises are failing to bring down inflation fuelled by international fossil fuel prices and food prices disrupted by climate change. They will only continue to impoverish households and enrich banks.

What we need are better tools for dealing with inflation than blunt instruments like interest rates, and a windfall tax on bank profits to redress the harm done to workers and families by rate hikes.”

The Market’s False Divinity: Unveiling Insatiable Greed

Adding to the complexity of the situation is the intertwining web of vested interests, reaching across the political spectrum. From the Tory prime minister to the Labour opposition’s prominent figures, all having stakes in the energy companies and banks. Such entanglements obscure the truth, as charlatans peddle quack remedies, conveniently sparing the powerful while the vulnerable suffer, like medieval peasants resorting to blood-letting to pacify an angry god. The genuine diagnosis languishes in the shadows, hidden by the deceitful games of conniving figures.

So long as runaway energy costs and corporate gluttony are left unchecked, tightening the screw of interest only immiserates renters, mortgage prisoners and small businesses while leaving the root causes to fester. It serves only to goad families and bussiness towards the destitution of penury and bankruptcy.

But perhaps their fate is purposeful, forcing dependence on the usurious payday lender to whom government has outsourced its duty of relief.

Our ancestors would be aghast to behold a society in thrall to the golden calf, where the moneylender’s ethic reigns supreme while thrift and prudence are impoverishing virtues. This abject surrender to the dictatorship of Mammon becomes feasible only when the working class representation is banished from the public square, when the voices that were once our advocates now echo the interests of banks and markets they serve.

This oligarchy is using our plundered commons, our resources to impoverish the people, time we took back what’s rightfully ours…