Big banks are raking in billions, and we all pay the price – time for a new windfall tax

theguardian.com:

A nother week, another corporate monopoly recording huge profits off the backs of millions struggling to pay bills, feed their families and keep the lights on. This time it’s the turn of the big banks, which are reporting record profits driven by the interest rate hikes that the Bank of England has continued to ratchet up, despite its own admission that this may do little to bring down inflation, which is driven by high fossil fuel prices.

Today HSBC reported doubling its quarterly profits to £4.3bn for the end of 2022. The big five banks – Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, NatWest and Standard Chartered – look set to post profits of £37.4bn as they reveal their earnings for 2022. These are the highest since the 2008 crash and are coming straight from households and small businesses in the form of higher mortgage payments, and increased rates on loans. Banks are also set to receive £150bn in the next six years from the Bank of England paying interest on the risk-free reserves banks hold with the central bank, an average of £25bn a year essentially just for sitting on cash.

The scale of this transfer from the public to banks is especially difficult to justify at a time when most workers are barely able to cover the essentials, and public services are facing even more cuts. And it’s not as if the banks are passing these interest rate hikes on to savers; they are hoarding them, and paying out huge bonuses after the government removed the bonus cap. Last week Barclays reported £1.8bn was paid out in bonuses, from a total of £7bn profit, and NatWest profits increased by a third to £5.1bn.

The interest rate hikes that banks are benefiting from are not inevitable or necessary, they are a symptom of the dysfunctional institutional setup