This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. Send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for more info. --------------78A42BAC68 The Royal Bank has followed the lead of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) in waging a public relations campaign against the youth. With the banks increasingly under fire for their role in the economy and society, the banks seem to be adopting the strategy that the best defence is offence. In May, the CIBC issued a report on youth unemployment. It said that the capitalists should make more of an effort to create jobs for the youth, brandishing the very dull sword that presents the aim of capitalist investment as creating jobs and not as making maximum capitalist profits. Of course, the banks themselves are amongst the most exposed of the capitalists, investing billions abroad, wherever the return is the highest. Not a word was said about the way in which the capitalist crisis is being further deepened by the huge debt servicing payments the banks and other sectors of the financial oligarchy receive from funds diverted from social spending and so on. While attempting to completely whitewash the capitalist system and its inherent crisis of unemployment, and the real aim of capitalist investment, the CIBC went further and put the onus on the youth to create their own jobs, by later announcing "entrepreneur" loan programs. When it comes to the youth, Canada's banks have exacted many, many millions of dollars in interest payments on government guaranteed student loans. In the course of the anti-social response of the capitalists to their crisis, the already unacceptable student loan program was further handed over to the banks, with the government guarantee for student loans being replaced by a "risk-commission." As the economy has worsened, and the risk of student default has grown, the banks are now treating the students like any other clients, simply declaring that student loans are not in their economic interest any longer. On top of this, they are now pushing that the youth are being strengthened by the anti-social offensive. While the financial oligarchy considers it only normal that the entire society should support and pay it, when it comes to the youth, it is extolling the virtues of self-sufficiency and not counting on society for anything. This was the main message of a report issued by the Royal Bank with the help of d-side, a Toronto-based "strategy firm" at the end of June. The Royal Bank literally lauds the anti-social offensive and presents the abdication of social responsibility by the governments as something actually supported by the youth. "Raised in a period of recession and debt," the report says, "members of this generation question the state's role as stable provider and have come to accept an increased level of individual accountability for social services, health care and education." The banks targetting of the youth and their attempts to whitewash both the capitalist system and the anti-social offensive of the financial oligarchy reflects their deep fear of the youth, particularly their growing consciousness that the solution to the problems they face is to put an end to the parasitic and crisis-ridden capitalist system. All the facts, including those pertaining to banks in Canada, are increasingly showing that the society can be brought out of the crisis only if the trend in which the entire society is subordinated to the interests of the financial oligarchy is ended. The need for a moratorium on the debt and the nationalization of banks and financial institutions is richly corroborated by the experience of the people, and so the banks are trying to get themselves off the hook. This is why the banks are targetting the youth, who stand as one of the most important social forces for the transformation of the society through the implementation of the program to Stop Paying the Rich Increase Funding For Social Programs! CPC(M-L) Shawgi Tell Graduate School of Education University at Buffalo [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------78A42BAC68--