Article by Angelo Alves, member of the Political Commitee and of the International Department

At the same moment of the publishing of this text, news on the chaos of the European and Asian Stock Exchange succeed, confirming the global character of the present economic and financial crisis and the void impact of the adopted millionaire plans in order to try to hold back the explosion. In the opening of the markets, the Tokyo, Shanghai, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Moscow stock exchanges among many others, such as Lisbon, registered historical falls.

After the North-American credit giants, news about bankruptcy or risks of bankruptcy in Europe, now succeed. The " sirens" rung in Germany, with the Hypo Real Estate crash, but also in Ireland, France, Belgium, Spain, just to refer some examples. The arrival of the crisis of the productive economy is already an evidence (as the signals of alert coming from, for example, the small and medium enterprises in Europe) and the same economists who, in the last months, argued in denying the crisis or confining it to "the sub-prime crisis", now they lay down their arms and talk about the world economy recession.

In Europe, great bankers, speculators and political leaders, multiply themselves in contacts, meetings, auditions - such as the so-called " G4 summit" in Paris, - attempting, on one hand, to restrain the succession of "explosions" within the European financial sectors, and on the other, dealing with the contradictions which therefore emerge from the conflicts of interests (of the great capital which each one represents and defends) which result from the crisis.

Summits which, demonstrating how the directorate of the great European powers has no reluctance in imposing its "solutions" to the other European Union countries, show us, in an eloquent way how false the so-called "principles" of "solidarity" and "mutual aid" are, a thousand times repeated in order to justify neo liberalism and federalism within the European Union.

Contacts, conversations, negotiations, always accomplished, and with no exception, in a closed circuit, delimitated by the central purpose of finding a formula which, permitting to save the income and the economic and financial instruments owned by the international financial oligarchy, shall permit in the most dissimulated possible manner and the least political damages, the transfer of the effects and the costs of the crisis upon the working and popular classes unto a spiral of exploitation and real robbery of public money to finance those who someone - in a really curious formula – has already named "Banksters"and save them from themselves.

But the situation is such that, dissimulation is already impossible. The discussion and the " waiting compass" in the USA’s Congress round the Paulson Plan has revealed the deep difficulties in which the system meets itself, in order to answer the crisis and, moreover, to justify before the masses, the "solutions" the system points out. The workers and the people of the USA have reacted against the Paulson plan with a simple idea: if the government does not help us, we that are not capable of paying our loans, why should it help those who kept our houses and seize our goods? This is the deep contradiction the system is not able of giving an answer. The crisis exists owing to the exploitation of the masses and the concentration of capital, and the measures that, within the USA and Europe, are being forwarded, will only lift higher the hammer which will fall over the heads of the same, as ever, the exploited. But capitalism will not rot, therefore it is necessary to be attentive to the system’s political and militarist reactions, which might develop in the near future – the extreme right-wing, racism, xenophobia, the "hard-hands" to manage the situation, the use of force to repress social rebellions and war. The answer can only be one: intense mass struggle, internationalist solidarity and ideological offensive.