Ethnic minorities make up a big part of the migrant work force and often fill low paid, low skill or temporary positions, despite often being educated and substantially skilled workers like teachers and accountants in their country of origin. They come here for many reasons but low wages, high unemployment and scarce job opportunities in their country of origin are the usual culprits.

As I write, the New York stock exchange index fell to its lowest level in six years as the big financial institutions and investors in company stocks slipped into the depth of despond about the state of the world capitalist economy. And these investors have every reason to feel depressed.  The world economy, by most estimates from the major international institutions, will contract this year for the first time since the 1940s.  And by the world, they mean everywhere, not just in the advanced capitalist economies. 

Stock exchanges in Britain and the USA have been on the slide over the past few days. The reason is not hard to seek. The FTSE has been spooked by bank shares collapsing. Barclays, for instance, saw 25% of its share price shaved off in one hour last Friday (16.01.09). This was the day after the bank announced 2,100 job losses.It’s starting to look like the time back in October when it seemed that banks such as Barclays and the Bank of Scotland (now HBOS) that had been in existence for hundreds of years would be destroyed by a share collapse in a matter of hours.

Keynesianism is the only serious economic theory that contends it can do away with the tendency of capitalism to move from boom to bust by stimulating the economy. If it could really perform that miracle and eliminate the contradictions of capitalism, then it could provide a sound platform for reformism and ever-improving living standards for the mass of workers under capitalism. If Keynesianism works, then reformism is practical politics.

As we go into 2009, world capitalism is experiencing its worst economic crisis since the 1930s.  In some ways it may even be worse than that because, this time, every country in the world is affected.  In the 1930s, many very poor countries not closely integrated into world markets did not feel the sharp collapse of the capitalist system that was dominant in Europe, North America and Japan.  But since the Second World War, and particularly in the last 25 years, 'globalisation' has brought India, China, Latin America, nearly all Asia and much of Africa fully into the capitalist nexus.  So no country can escape the terrible slump that world capitalism entered in the latter part of 2008 and will continue to grind down through this year.

The gravity of the present world economic crisis comes in part from the spectacular imbalances and crazy capital flows that occurred in the years of the boom that finally juddered to a halt last year. Martin Wolf, an eminent spokesperson for big capital, warns in the Financial Times (02.12.08), “The world has run out of willing and creditworthy private borrowers. The spectacular collapse of the western financial system is a symptom of this big fact... In the long run, the global economy will have to rebalance.” If it doesn’t work out, “The open world economy may even break down. As in the 1930s, this is now a real danger.”

He goes on, “In 2008, according to forecasts from the International Monetary Fund, the aggregate excess of savings over investment in surplus countries will be just over $2,000bn...In 2008 the big deficit countries are, in order, the US, Spain, the UK, France, Italy and Australia. The US is far and away the biggest borrower of them all. These six countries are expected to run almost 70 per cent of the world’s deficits.”