According to a recent United Nations study, the richest 1% of adults in the world own 40% of the planet's wealth. Europe, the US and some Asia Pacific nations accounted for most of the extremely wealthy. More than one-third lives in the US, while Japan accounts for 27%, the UK for 6% and France for 5%. But bourgeois economists still insist Marx was wrong!

The bourgeois economists are incapable of understanding crises, which are an inescapable result of capitalism. They look for subjective factors such as “confidence”, even “human nature”. In reality what we are witnessing are the real workings of the capitalist system in a period of decline.

The recent chaos on world stock markets is a manifestation of the general turbulence that is the most prominent feature of the present epoch. The crisis that affected the Northern Rock bank in Britain is but an indication of dramatic events that are being prepared globally.

Over the past 15 years production has risen at about 3% a year in the OECD countries, while money supply, mortgage and company debt, personal borrowing and the massive so-called derivatives market based on this credit has increased at over 25% a year! Result? A huge bubble which is now bursting, starting with Northern Rock.

Recently, the Bank of England hiked its interest rates yet again to 5.75%,the fifth rise since August 2005, and "further action" on interest rates could be on its way. The interest rate may go to 6% or more by the end of this year. The credit-led boom is now in jeopardy as central banks raise interest rates everywhere.

The financial turbulence of recent days has wiped billions off the price of shares all around the world. On Friday August 10^th London’s stock exchange, the FTSE 100, alone dropped £63 billion. What does this mean?