01-24-2010, 01:33 PM
2010: THE TURNING POINT
John Hoefle
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2010/37..._2010.html
As the new year rolls in, the ancient Chinese curse/blessing "May you live in interesting times" comes to mind. For we do, indeed, live in them. These are times of both tragedy, and opportunity, as an old and evil system dies a well-deserved and long-overdue death, and the fight over what will replace it takes center stage.
The old system, in its present incarnation, is known as the British Empire, but traces its roots back through Venice, Rome, and beyond. It is a maritime empire whose power is based upon control of money and trade. In the post-World War II period, the empire has cloaked itself in the corporate world, creating global cartels and global markets, controlled by global bankers, but underneath the corporatist facade, lies the same old parasitic imperialism.
That empire is dying, a victim of its own success at looting the world to the point where a devastating collapse is inevitable, unless the nations of the world rise up, cast off the imperial parasites, and return to the path of progress. Fortunately for all of us, that shift has begun.
The King Is Dead
The British Empire's fate was sealed in mid-2007, with the simultaneous deaths of its monetary system, and the financial system that monetary system had created. The distinction is important. The power of the empire rests in its ability to control the supply and price of money. It does this through a network of central banks, such as the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve, and the European Central Bank. These so-called "independent" central banks are creatures of the empire, which views itself as sitting above mere nation-states.
The claim has been made that, in the bailout frenzy of the past two years, the central banks have become tools of the state. The Fed, it has been said repeatedly, has become virtually an arm of the U.S. Treasury, carrying out government policy. In fact, the opposite is true. The Treasury, and the White House, are captives of the imperial system which controls the Fed.
The bailout, underneath all the empty promises, was never intended to bring the dead system back to life. Instead, it was intended to support the imperial monetary system during the transition from the dead financial system to what the empire planned as its replacement: a global financial dictatorship. At the same time, it served to bankrupt the nation-states, the biggest obstacle to this global fascist plan.
The real goal of the British Empire is to turn back the clock to when it ruled the world in its own name, before the American Revolution changed the balance of power. Its scheme to do so revolves around sharp reductions in global population. That is, genocide. The bailout, the phony "man-made global warming" scare around which the Copenhagen conference was organized, and the accelerating, born-in-Britain, police-state measures, are all elements of a plan to impose crushing austerity.
This evil scheme, ironically, is what dooms the Brutish Empire. By destroying the physical-economic basis for life, the empire is destroying the basis for its own existence, and the basis for the existence of civilization itself. If they kill us all, they kill themselves, too.
Now, or Not in Our Lifetimes
The collapse that began in mid-2007 has continued, unabated (see Figure 1). Sometimes it breaks into the headlines, as with the open panic of September 2008, while other times, it travels under the protective screen of the corporate media and the government's statistical fraud. But it is always there. And the losses keep growing, as the real economy collapses beneath the financial games.
Out in the real world, away from the press releases, the spin doctors, the phony statistics, and the rest of the fog machine, it's nothing but collapse. In the U.S., we see record numbers of foreclosures, and the rapid growth of "Obamaville" tent cities. Jobs are disappearing at a staggering clip, setting the stage for more foreclosures, more bankruptcies, more losses for merchants and lenders. Revenues of state and local governments are vaporizing, forcing them to make even deeper cuts in services already cut beyond tolerable limits, and raising taxes on a population that is sinking deeper and deeper into economic misery. The situation is untenable, and unsustainable—and the worst is yet to come.
This is not a linear process that will play out over the next decade or so. When Lyndon LaRouche declared in his July 25, 2007 webcast that the global financial system had died, many failed to listen. Wall Street, though panic was spreading internally, insisted all was well, the system was sound, ad nauseam.
Yet, by the end of 2007, the Fed and the European Central Bank had launched extraordinary bailout facilities—and, in March 2008, Bear Stearns effectively failed. Then, in September, barely a year after LaRouche's declaration, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson went before Congress to demand the immediate passage of the TARP bailout scheme, to stop the in-progress meltdown of the global financial system. Paulson got his TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), which only accelerated the meltdown.
The fools claim that the bailout worked, that the collapse has not only been arrested, but reversed. But how can that be, when all that was done was to pile even more debt atop a mountain of already unpayable debt, while the power of the physical economy to pay that debt has sharply declined? The "bailers" may have broken the psychology of panic for a while, but they have solved nothing. And, in the process, they have turned trillions of dollars of private debt, into government-guaranteed debt, and triggered the hyperinflation of the dollar. The policy has not only been a failure, it has been a nation-killing failure. We will not survive, if we continue down this path.
Thus, we enter 2010 at a turning point. Our current trajectory, under the fascist policies of the British Empire and its stooges, is into a dark oblivion—an oblivion far too many among us have been forced to glimpse. If we continue down this path, we will not survive the year. The alternative, the reorganization-and-recovery plan outlined by LaRouche, provides us with a way to climb out of the pit—but only if it is implemented now. In 2010, our world is going to change for the better, or it will change, almost unimaginably, for the worse.
Defeat the British Empire
If mankind is to survive, we must finally defeat the oligarchic pestilence and its imperial monetary system. Not reach an agreement with it; not put it at a disadvantage; but end its power over the human race. We must, as sovereign nations, once again take control over our own money, and direct our spending into areas that promote the general welfare. That means infrastructure projects, economic development, rebuilding and expanding our productive base. It means putting our people back to work in productive jobs which benefit society as a whole. It means returning to science and technology, setting new goals and exceeding them. It means putting human settlements on Mars, as a jumping-off point for exploring the universe in which we live.
The biggest single obstacle to all of this is that medieval monstrosity known as the British Empire. It is the empire which is the beneficiary of the bailout program, at the expense of the people. It is the empire that pushes the superstition known as "man-made global warming," as a way of shutting down human progress and killing off two-thirds of the world's population. It is the empire that relentlessly pushes the police state, by staging phony incidents and using those incidents to justify ever more intrusive and un-Constitutional measures. It is the empire that plays on our impulses to keep us dumb, blind, and passive, while it destroys all we hold dear.
But the British Empire is also irrational, a wild beast acting on instinct as it tries to protect a world view that should long ago have passed into history. Its effort to use the Copenhagen Climate Change summit to set up what amounts to a world government under the guise of environmental concerns, was a failure, as many nations chose survival over submission. Though it is still powerful, and far from defeated, for the first time in a long time, the smell of its own blood is in the water.
It is, after all, the British Empire's derivatives-fuelled financial system which collapsed. They failed, and then demanded that we commit suicide to rescue them. In the U.S., the Federal government quickly complied, but the population rebelled, and that rebellion has become a major factor of resistance. President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress have given the Brits virtually everything they demanded, but they are increasingly hated for doing so. And their power is eroding by the minute.
Other nations, seeing this rising resistance in the U.S., and knowing the Hell which awaits them if they capitulate to British demands, are emboldened to defend their own sovereignty. The Russia-China economic development accords, signed in October 2009, are a good example of this, and a demonstration that we can buck the empire and survive. This process escalated at Copenhagen, drying up the British wet dream of global dictatorship.
The fight is not over, but it has begun—and that is the most positive step of 2009. LaRouche, as the most creative generator of ideas alive today, is the driver of this movement toward a new Renaissance. He is the general who can win the war, and he needs your support.
2010 is the year all those who agree with LaRouche must come out publicly and say so, and support the LaRouche Plan. Don't be afraid, don't hide behind institutional excuses, or throw up other silly barriers. It is time for all good men and women to take a stand, to support LaRouche and the principles embodied in the U.S. Constitution. Join us on the front lines, and enjoy striking a blow for freedom.
It is time to finally retire the little shrinking queen and her army of sycophants, and put the world back on track. They deserve it, and so do the rest of us. Let us make 2010 the first year of the new Renaissance.
LAROUCHE's EMERGENCY PLAN FOR JANUARY 2010
Nancy Spannaus
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2010/37...n2010.html
In the immediate aftermath of the crushing defeat delivered to the British Empire at the December Copenhagen Summit, Lyndon LaRouche called for an emergency mobilization to ram through the crucial measures required to bring the United States into collaboration with the three sovereign powers—China, Russia, and India—which defied the Empire.
Those measures fall into four steps: 1) bankruptcy reorganization; 2) emergency protective measures for the U.S. population; 3) a massive employment program to rebuild U.S. infrastructure; and 4) linking up with China, Russia, and India in their ongoing collaboration to rebuild the planet. We review the Constitutional basis, and necessity, for each of these measures, below.
Put together, this emergency program amounts to a patriotic defense of the United States from what has been a 60-plus year process of subversion, and attack, by the British Empire of finance. It has to be fought for in that fashion, because the life of our nation depends upon its implementation.
LaRouche said on Dec. 22:
"This has to be done in the first weeks in January.... This is emergency legislation, because if we don't do that, somewhere, maybe a little bit after the middle of January, or even possibly before, the whole system's coming down, if we don't do it, beforehand."
Since LaRouche's formulation of this program, a number of video presentations on the LaRouche January Plan have been made available on www.larouchepac.com, which dramatically summarize what must be done in the few weeks ahead. [See Emergency Actions for the mid-January Crisis; The LaRouche Plan for Economic Recovery Now; and The American Spirit of the Blue Collar Worker.]Here, we provide a complementary elaboration in print, highlighting the major steps required.
I. Bankruptcy Reorganization, Along Glass-Steagall Standards
"First of all, you agree that you're going to change the U.S. system, from a monetary system, which it is now, to a credit system."
Nothing can be done to reverse the collapse of the U.S., or world economy, without starting with a sweeping bankruptcy reorganization, which will put trillions of dollars of gambling debts which have been created by the British-dominated world monetary system, into the deep freeze, and thus clear the decks for the re-establishment of a sound credit system, based on the standard set by President Franklin D. Roosevelt: the Glass-Steagall standard.
First, the President must declare a national emergency. Then he must put the whole banking system, from the Federal Reserve on down, into bankruptcy, and start sorting out the mess.
The standard for reorganization was preeminently defined by the U.S. Constitution in its Preamble, which sets out the overriding principle of the General Welfare which governs the U.S. Constitution as a whole. It is in line with that principle that the specific powers of the Federal government are outlined, including that which gives the Congress, in Section 1, Article 8, the exclusive right to "coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin," and "to establish ... uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States." This Congressional power leaves no room for a foreign institution controlling the finances of the nation—as later occurred with Anglophile President Woodrow Wilson's creation of the approximation of a European-style central bank, the Federal Reserve system.
What was therefore established through the Constitution, and the subsequent institutions created by the first U.S. Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, to implement Constitutional objectives—especially the First National Bank—was a credit system, in which currencies issued were directly derived from the government's decisions to provide for the general welfare of its citizens.
2. The Glass-Steagall Act
Violations of this Constitutional system during the course of U.S. history are myriad—but, in the nation's existential crisis of 1932-33, Franklin Roosevelt acted to return to the standard set by the Constitution, by enacting the Glass-Steagall Act. Glass-Steagall set up a firewall between state and Federal commercial banks, and investment banks, which specialized in speculation in everything from commodities, to real estate, to what could be called a secondary market in debt.
What the Glass-Steagall Act said was, that a commercial bank, a bank that holds citizens' deposits, for example, and then uses those deposits for certain kinds of investments in the real economy—mortgages, etc.—that kind of bank cannot engage in speculative investments. And a series of regulations specified that these banks can have no proprietary role—in other words, the bank doesn't use the savings of citizens to make money on its own investments.
So, it's a complete firewall. There are two separate kinds of banks, and one can't engage in the activities of the other. The Roosevelt Administration also put in certain controls over interest rates that certain banks could pay, for example, savings & loans. This was a rigorous regulation, constraining commercial banking, that is, state and Federally chartered banks. It also created a certain separation between Federal and state banks. So that these things were completely regulated: that the banks had to be oriented toward investments in the real economy, and relatively limited. You couldn't sell the mortgages and securitize them, the way the banks have done today, and turn them into instruments for speculation.
But, to be clear: FDR's regulations worked, only after he declared a bank holiday, and sorted out the dross. In our case, we need bankruptcy reorganization first—then Glass-Steagall.
Once this standard is applied, there is no question about what will happen. Literally trillions of phony debt—including the bailout funds which were issued in order to protect the investment banks over the past two and a half years—will be wiped out. Debts that do not correspond to a Glass-Steagall standard will simply be set aside, and not honored. Legitimate debts, which correspond to payrolls, pension obligations, and the like, will be honored.
3. Bankruptcy Protection
Once again, we are applying a Constitutional principle—the principle of bankruptcy reorganization in favor of saving the productive capacity of the nation. Contrary to Europe, the United States had a tradition of permitting individuals, and eventually, corporations, as well, to be protected from their creditors in respect to their vital functions in service to the community. Whereas in Europe, going bankrupt was considered to be a crime, to be rewarded with debtors' prison, in the United States, bankruptcy reorganization could be used to relieve the bankrupt entity or person of immediate pressing debts, and permit the entity or individual to work their way out of penury.
On June 7, 1934, FDR signed the Corporate Reorganizations Act, which instituted bankruptcy protection for corporations "in line with the public interest." It called for freezing collection efforts against an entity, and maintaining that entity's ability to continue to operate. The entity is also permitted to obtain new credit necessary for ongoing operations, implicitly beginning with a clean slate, with the old debts in deep freeze. The purpose is to keep productive activity going, because it is in the interest of the community as a whole.
This is precisely the kind of protection which is required today for our bankrupt chartered banks, and for much of our industry, and many of our families as well. It's the kind of protection which was effectively applied by Alexander Hamilton for the nation as a whole, when he was organizing the finances of the young United States, which was saddled with unpayable debts following the Revolution, to be able to grow.
When FDR died, however, agents of the British monetarist system began to roll back his measures, culminating, in 1999, when Glass-Steagall was repealed altogether, effectively opening up the path for the unbridled looting which has brought us to the economic disintegration, and financial bankruptcy, we face today. Only a bankruptcy reorganization, which cancels the bailout and trillions more of illegitimate debt, can put us back on track.
WORLD RECOVERY POSSIBLE ONLY WITH A FOUR POWER AGREEMENT
Here are remarks Lyndon LaRouche made to a private luncheon in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 4, 2009.
http://www.larouchepub.com/lar/2009/3644...lunch.html
First of all, we have to accept the reality that the present world international monetary-financial system is crashing, and nothing will ever save this system. There will never be a recovery of this system, in the present form. However, bankruptcy reorganization is a part of life. And if a number of great powers were to agree to break the present system, and start a new system, a recovery would be possible.
Now, at the Rhodes conference which I attended [see LaRouche Rhodes conference speech], this came up, and it was rather important that I be there for that purpose. And because my record as an economist, particularly in forecasting, is, I must say, unmatched on the planet today, and therefore it was my job to present clearly what a Four-Power agreement among the United States, Russia, China, and India, and other countries brought into the same agreement, would mean for the planet. It would mean that we would have a convention, an agreement on forming a new system, scrapping the present monetary system, which can be scrapped because it is already bankrupt. There is no possibility, on this planet, ever, that the present monetary system of the world, will continue to exist. It will not exist. It is finished.
However, economy is not limited to monetary systems. A monetary system, especially when it's a free-trade system, which it's called today, is actually an international dictatorship, an empire of monetary power, which is not subjected to any nation's power. Nations create currency, and related credit, by their willingness to print money, or to do the same thing in terms of coinage. And that's a credit system. A monetary system, which has existed in the European model since about the time of the Peloponnesian war, has been a system of money which is above nations. Private interests, of banking interests, create a monetary system, which, by various manipulations, places itself in authority above nation-states. As distinct from what the American System prescribes, as a constitutional system, which is a credit system.
Under our Constitution, when followed, no international monetary system is allowed to dominate the United States. It is the utterance of credit, or currency as credit, by the United States government, which, according to the U.S. Constitution, is the only legitimate system which this nation can accept.
The United States is unique in that respect: in respect to the terms of its Constitution. Other parts of the world are conditioned to accept monetary systems, which rise above the power of nation states, to agreements made by private financial interests, which then dominate nation states. The IMF, which was really created to be a project piloted by Franklin Roosevelt, was transformed by Truman, and by Churchill, immediately into a world empire, an imperial international monetary system, financial system, not a credit system.
Cancel the Bubble
Now, we've come to the point, especially where the derivatives program, which was launched in 1987, with that derivatives program, we have created a wild-eyed international monetary bubble, which now goes to hundreds of trillions of dollars of nominal obligations—far more than any nation could ever repay. This monetary bubble, is now collapsing. Every part of the world is being more or less crushed by this, by this bubble. The only way to deal with it, is to do what has been done in times past, as was done by the American Revolution, in founding the United States: Cancel the bubble.
Now, we have a standard in the United States, which was implemented in a special form by Franklin Roosevelt, President Roosevelt, in 1933. It was called the Glass-Steagall Act. And the point was, that under a commercial banking system, regulated commercial banking systems, they would be protected by bankruptcy law, against exactly what has happened since 1987, under the U.S. Federal Reserve System, and its extension internationally.
So, this monetary bubble has grown to hundreds of trillions of dollars of nominal claims against humanity, far greater than any nation. And what you do is, by applying a Glass-Steagall principle, which is also a principle of the U.S. Constitution, you simply say you call a bankruptcy proceeding, and you look at those claims, those assets, those debts, which qualify under a Glass-Steagall standard, and you put those under bankruptcy protection. That debt is protected. It will be resolved, it can be negotiated, but it will still exist.
Those accounts which are purely monetary accounts, which do not meet a Glass-Steagall standard, are simply eliminated, by bankruptcy proceedings, as under U.S. bankruptcy law, constitutional bankruptcy law.
Thus, the United States, initiating a process which says we have a gross debt, a monetarist debt, on the world, which far exceeds everything the world can pay—it's a debt which is crushing nations, and looting them—and therefore, we have to free ourselves from that. And we simply apply the model of the Glass-Steagall, which was repealed by a skunk in the United States. But we reinstate this process, defend and reorganize the commercial banking systems, of nations and within nations. So that the banking systems function under a Glass-Steagall standard of protection.
This means we're defending national credit, and we're taking the monetarist speculation, financial derivatives and similar kinds of filth—we simply wipe it off the books. And somewhere in the range of $100 trillion of claims, is eliminated from the back of the planet.
What we have to do, then, is to go back to the other side of it. Use this concept of national banking, with protection for the private commercial banking systems, under bankruptcy protection. Under these conditions, by establishing a fixed-exchange-rate system among the participating nations, we can then utter long-term credit—I'm talking about 25- to 50-year credit, because to rebuild the world economy today, requires long-term investments based largely on large-scale infrastructure: that is, large-scale essential infrastructure projects will be the stimulus for rebuilding private industry, within economies. For example: water projects, large-scale rail projects, and so forth.
The Russia-China Agreements
Now, what happened in this process?
My function at Rhodes was in the economics program, to present my proposal, which was about 15 minutes. And, following this—and this involved, particularly, the relationship between Russia and China, which was the essential thing on which I was focussed in my presentation. Russia and China were on the verge of a negotiation, in this period, in which China has a trillion-dollar obligation of the United States, which is owed to China. This trillion-dollar debt of the United States, under the Obama Administration itself, in the present form, is essentially worthless. The collapse of a trillion-dollar obligation by the United States, to China, would be a disaster for China, and a chain-reaction, affecting the world as a whole.
So, what happened between the negotiations between Russia and China, was essentially an arrangement to utilize the legitimate debt which China is owed against the United States' promises, and to use that, to monetize it, by investing it in something productive, which would be useful for Asia. And a very large-scale project of transportation and related systems, was agreed upon between Russia and China.
The intent was not to stop there: The intent is to extend this kind of agreement to Southeast Asia generally, and to include India. The intention of some of us, is to bring the United States into the same arrangement. Because, the combined power of the United States, Russia, China, India, and nations who wish to be associated with them in this kind of venture, is the greatest financial, economic power on the planet. If that planetary power decides to do what must be done, we can reorganize and rebuild the world, and shift quickly from a downward process, into an upward process. That's our option.
The key thing has to be: the United States, Russia, China, and India. Without an agreement among those four nations, such a recovery of the world is not possible. With those four nations, and other nations—such as, immediately, Southeast Asia, Korea, Japan, and so forth—other nations come in, and now we're talking about the possibility of a general program, of creating a new, world fixed-exchange-rate system, as a credit system, not a monetary system, but a credit system of fixed-exchange rate agreements, for long-term cooperation, in infrastructure investments, which will be drivers for the development of productive investments.
By infrastructure, we mean, first of all, large-scale transportation: modern rail, and superior to rail [mag-lev], of land transport. The object is to be able to travel by land across Eurasia, through the Bering Strait, into the Americas, and through the Middle East, into all of Africa. We can thus make connections, in these kinds of mass transit, which are more efficient than water-borne transport, and which will be a driver for development in every area through which such rail and related systems travel. We can transport people more efficiently, and more quickly, in net effect, by this kind of rail system, than we can by aircraft. Aircraft systems are not so necessarily efficient—they seem attractive under some conditions.
So, this is what we have to do.
A Shocking Defeat for Obama
Now, we've had a change in the United States, which is relevant. The change was the election which occurred on Tuesday [Nov. 3]. This change is a shocking defeat for the present Obama Administration of the United States, and will become apparently so, very soon. The figures will be coming out. The Obama health-care program, which I've opposed, as it's genocidal, will be stopped. The cap-and-trade policy, which is opposed by some countries in Asia, in particular, will be stopped. We must go to basic economic infrastructure. We must rebuild the high-technology skills of people. We must provide employment for high-technology productive skills, and we must, above all, establish a general idea of a principle of negotiation of treaty agreements, long-term treaty agreements, among the nations of the world, and regions of the world.
For example: Take the case of Africa. Africa is a continent which has been condemned to be looted. And it's still being looted. If you take a nighttime view of Africa, as if from satellite, and you're looking for light in Africa, in what percentile of the total territory of Africa do you see light, at nightime? As opposed to other parts of the world. Look at the water resources of Africa. How are these reassorted, how are they maintained? As opposed to other parts of the world which have had development.
So therefore, the development of Africa, which does have large resources in terms of raw materials, especially in the Southern [African] Shield [mineral belt]—that area has to be developed. Therefore, by a global development, which includes and understands our mutual interest in the development of Africa, we can attack that problem.
We have tundra areas, as in Siberia, as in northern Canada—in Canada generally. Again, large areas of resources. Now, this is an area where Russia is particularly useful, because my friends in the Vernadsky Institute in Moscow, are the greatest world authorities on dealing with tundra areas for this kind of project. They are the students of Vernadsky, and they know how to do this. So therefore, if we aim for the Bering Strait tunnel, and for related development, the whole area of the Arctic, which is thinly populated, very thinly populated, and almost unmanageable, can be managed and developed. This contains essential mineral resources, which are needed by the world at large, right now.
Especially, areas like China. China lacks resources of this type, in its own territory. Only through going to the northern tundra area, do we get the kind of resources that are needed, to meet the demands of Asia, in general.
Similarly, only by taking this area of the Northern Shield in the Americas, do you have a similar kind of development, and so forth.
So therefore, there are common areas, like Africa, like this area, which need to be developed in order to meet the requirements of humanity in the time to come.
Now, with the fact that the Obama Administration's present program has been shot down in disgrace, in the Tuesday election, means that the United States is going to be much more receptive to innovations. Because, the majority of the American people, probably 80%, are really, in point of fact, opposed to these policies which Obama has represented. We saw that in the demonstrations in August. But those demonstrations in August were continuing, in the minds of the people. But these are ordinary people. It's a phenomenon like what was described by Rosa Luxemburg, for example, as a mass strike. A case where there's a spontaneous reaction, by a people, against oppression.
We saw this, for example, in East Germany, in 1989, especially in that area, where the mass strike of the people, the spontaneous reaction of people, saying "We are the people, you must listen to us, and care for our concerns."
And we're now at a point, where that's true around the world. It's true inside the United States. But the people in a mass strike movement are not violent people. They're not flaming conspiratorial revolutionaries. They're simply people saying, "We are the people. And you have to pay some attention to our concerns. You have to respond to our concerns, and listen to our concerns, and talk with us about this."
What happened in the recent election, on Tuesday, the mass strike inside the U.S. population, which had never gone away, since August, suddenly expressed itself in the first election which was available for them, to express their contempt for both the Republican and the Democratic parties. And that's the election result which occurred yesterday.
An End to Globalization
So, under these circumstances, where the Obama Administration is now in deep trouble, where Russia understands its problem, where China understands its problem, where India is sympathetic to this problem, where Japan is eager to participate, where Korea will automatically participate—means that we have the basis for a consensus among nations, to put this whole monetary system through bankruptcy reorganization, establish a fixed exchange rate of credit systems among sovereign nations, and start to put together what we can recognize as are the major projects needed to build the foundations of real physical economic growth throughout this planet.
We must also recognize the importance in this, contrary to some of these universalists, these world government kind of freaks, that we need to have a system of sovereign nation-states, not a global system. We now have a terrible system, which has developed especially over the past 40 years, of globalization. Virtually no country controls as much as 80% of all its requirements, within its own territory. We used to have a system in which nations were sovereign, in the sense that they grew enough food and other essentials to maintain their population. That, if one nation went under, other nations would survive, because they had the protection of sovereignty, of national sovereignty.
Globalization is the enemy of mankind, because it's the enemy of culture. It's the enemy of a people's sense of its own national identity. The only real solutions are those which recognize national identity, national peculiarities, but on that very basis of difference, are able to cooperate, under mutual protection, in behalf of the interests of them all.
And that's what we must do.
As I say, we have reached a point, with the defeat of Obama, and it was a major defeat of Obama in the Tuesday election. His entire leading program was shot down in flames, by the voters. And the Republicans benefitted, in one sense, because the Democrats were more defeated than the Republicans. But it's both parties who have failed. And what was expressed was the way in which a mass strike, the American people, or a very large part of them, expressed, again, using the polls this time, to deliver the same message they delivered in August, throughout these meetings that were held by Congressmen and their contituents, then.
So, it's not guaranteed. Nothing is ever guaranteed in history. But the opportunities are provided. And it's up to statesmen to utilize the opportunities, for the benefit of their own nation, and for mankind. We've come into such a time, where that is the leading consideration. Because this planet cannot continue the way it's going.
We have 6.7 billion people on this planet, estimated, now. We have a potential ability to support a population of about 2 billion people, if you count all the things that are being lost. The water resources that are going down. All the other kinds of things that are going down. We're going into a tragedy.
It's not necessary to have a tragedy. What Russia and China have done is a sparkplug. It's the opening of a gate. There are meetings now with Russia and India, meetings in Southeast Asia, and others. The opening is now for the United States, to change its policy from what it's been recently, and to become, again, the United States which our founders of this nation, defended and demanded.
And we have to proceed from the standpoint of respect for the sovereignty of the individual nation-state, its cultural sovereignty, its political sovereignty. But at the same time, for cooperation to mutual advantage, among these nations, in common interest, for common causes. I believe that under those circumstances, it's still possible to save this nation, to save this republic, to save this world. And that's what I think is worth doing. I can't guarantee the success, but that's all I can think of that's worth doing.
John Hoefle
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2010/37..._2010.html
As the new year rolls in, the ancient Chinese curse/blessing "May you live in interesting times" comes to mind. For we do, indeed, live in them. These are times of both tragedy, and opportunity, as an old and evil system dies a well-deserved and long-overdue death, and the fight over what will replace it takes center stage.
The old system, in its present incarnation, is known as the British Empire, but traces its roots back through Venice, Rome, and beyond. It is a maritime empire whose power is based upon control of money and trade. In the post-World War II period, the empire has cloaked itself in the corporate world, creating global cartels and global markets, controlled by global bankers, but underneath the corporatist facade, lies the same old parasitic imperialism.
That empire is dying, a victim of its own success at looting the world to the point where a devastating collapse is inevitable, unless the nations of the world rise up, cast off the imperial parasites, and return to the path of progress. Fortunately for all of us, that shift has begun.
The King Is Dead
The British Empire's fate was sealed in mid-2007, with the simultaneous deaths of its monetary system, and the financial system that monetary system had created. The distinction is important. The power of the empire rests in its ability to control the supply and price of money. It does this through a network of central banks, such as the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve, and the European Central Bank. These so-called "independent" central banks are creatures of the empire, which views itself as sitting above mere nation-states.
The claim has been made that, in the bailout frenzy of the past two years, the central banks have become tools of the state. The Fed, it has been said repeatedly, has become virtually an arm of the U.S. Treasury, carrying out government policy. In fact, the opposite is true. The Treasury, and the White House, are captives of the imperial system which controls the Fed.
The bailout, underneath all the empty promises, was never intended to bring the dead system back to life. Instead, it was intended to support the imperial monetary system during the transition from the dead financial system to what the empire planned as its replacement: a global financial dictatorship. At the same time, it served to bankrupt the nation-states, the biggest obstacle to this global fascist plan.
The real goal of the British Empire is to turn back the clock to when it ruled the world in its own name, before the American Revolution changed the balance of power. Its scheme to do so revolves around sharp reductions in global population. That is, genocide. The bailout, the phony "man-made global warming" scare around which the Copenhagen conference was organized, and the accelerating, born-in-Britain, police-state measures, are all elements of a plan to impose crushing austerity.
This evil scheme, ironically, is what dooms the Brutish Empire. By destroying the physical-economic basis for life, the empire is destroying the basis for its own existence, and the basis for the existence of civilization itself. If they kill us all, they kill themselves, too.
Now, or Not in Our Lifetimes
The collapse that began in mid-2007 has continued, unabated (see Figure 1). Sometimes it breaks into the headlines, as with the open panic of September 2008, while other times, it travels under the protective screen of the corporate media and the government's statistical fraud. But it is always there. And the losses keep growing, as the real economy collapses beneath the financial games.
Out in the real world, away from the press releases, the spin doctors, the phony statistics, and the rest of the fog machine, it's nothing but collapse. In the U.S., we see record numbers of foreclosures, and the rapid growth of "Obamaville" tent cities. Jobs are disappearing at a staggering clip, setting the stage for more foreclosures, more bankruptcies, more losses for merchants and lenders. Revenues of state and local governments are vaporizing, forcing them to make even deeper cuts in services already cut beyond tolerable limits, and raising taxes on a population that is sinking deeper and deeper into economic misery. The situation is untenable, and unsustainable—and the worst is yet to come.
This is not a linear process that will play out over the next decade or so. When Lyndon LaRouche declared in his July 25, 2007 webcast that the global financial system had died, many failed to listen. Wall Street, though panic was spreading internally, insisted all was well, the system was sound, ad nauseam.
Yet, by the end of 2007, the Fed and the European Central Bank had launched extraordinary bailout facilities—and, in March 2008, Bear Stearns effectively failed. Then, in September, barely a year after LaRouche's declaration, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson went before Congress to demand the immediate passage of the TARP bailout scheme, to stop the in-progress meltdown of the global financial system. Paulson got his TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), which only accelerated the meltdown.
The fools claim that the bailout worked, that the collapse has not only been arrested, but reversed. But how can that be, when all that was done was to pile even more debt atop a mountain of already unpayable debt, while the power of the physical economy to pay that debt has sharply declined? The "bailers" may have broken the psychology of panic for a while, but they have solved nothing. And, in the process, they have turned trillions of dollars of private debt, into government-guaranteed debt, and triggered the hyperinflation of the dollar. The policy has not only been a failure, it has been a nation-killing failure. We will not survive, if we continue down this path.
Thus, we enter 2010 at a turning point. Our current trajectory, under the fascist policies of the British Empire and its stooges, is into a dark oblivion—an oblivion far too many among us have been forced to glimpse. If we continue down this path, we will not survive the year. The alternative, the reorganization-and-recovery plan outlined by LaRouche, provides us with a way to climb out of the pit—but only if it is implemented now. In 2010, our world is going to change for the better, or it will change, almost unimaginably, for the worse.
Defeat the British Empire
If mankind is to survive, we must finally defeat the oligarchic pestilence and its imperial monetary system. Not reach an agreement with it; not put it at a disadvantage; but end its power over the human race. We must, as sovereign nations, once again take control over our own money, and direct our spending into areas that promote the general welfare. That means infrastructure projects, economic development, rebuilding and expanding our productive base. It means putting our people back to work in productive jobs which benefit society as a whole. It means returning to science and technology, setting new goals and exceeding them. It means putting human settlements on Mars, as a jumping-off point for exploring the universe in which we live.
The biggest single obstacle to all of this is that medieval monstrosity known as the British Empire. It is the empire which is the beneficiary of the bailout program, at the expense of the people. It is the empire that pushes the superstition known as "man-made global warming," as a way of shutting down human progress and killing off two-thirds of the world's population. It is the empire that relentlessly pushes the police state, by staging phony incidents and using those incidents to justify ever more intrusive and un-Constitutional measures. It is the empire that plays on our impulses to keep us dumb, blind, and passive, while it destroys all we hold dear.
But the British Empire is also irrational, a wild beast acting on instinct as it tries to protect a world view that should long ago have passed into history. Its effort to use the Copenhagen Climate Change summit to set up what amounts to a world government under the guise of environmental concerns, was a failure, as many nations chose survival over submission. Though it is still powerful, and far from defeated, for the first time in a long time, the smell of its own blood is in the water.
It is, after all, the British Empire's derivatives-fuelled financial system which collapsed. They failed, and then demanded that we commit suicide to rescue them. In the U.S., the Federal government quickly complied, but the population rebelled, and that rebellion has become a major factor of resistance. President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress have given the Brits virtually everything they demanded, but they are increasingly hated for doing so. And their power is eroding by the minute.
Other nations, seeing this rising resistance in the U.S., and knowing the Hell which awaits them if they capitulate to British demands, are emboldened to defend their own sovereignty. The Russia-China economic development accords, signed in October 2009, are a good example of this, and a demonstration that we can buck the empire and survive. This process escalated at Copenhagen, drying up the British wet dream of global dictatorship.
The fight is not over, but it has begun—and that is the most positive step of 2009. LaRouche, as the most creative generator of ideas alive today, is the driver of this movement toward a new Renaissance. He is the general who can win the war, and he needs your support.
2010 is the year all those who agree with LaRouche must come out publicly and say so, and support the LaRouche Plan. Don't be afraid, don't hide behind institutional excuses, or throw up other silly barriers. It is time for all good men and women to take a stand, to support LaRouche and the principles embodied in the U.S. Constitution. Join us on the front lines, and enjoy striking a blow for freedom.
It is time to finally retire the little shrinking queen and her army of sycophants, and put the world back on track. They deserve it, and so do the rest of us. Let us make 2010 the first year of the new Renaissance.
LAROUCHE's EMERGENCY PLAN FOR JANUARY 2010
Nancy Spannaus
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2010/37...n2010.html
In the immediate aftermath of the crushing defeat delivered to the British Empire at the December Copenhagen Summit, Lyndon LaRouche called for an emergency mobilization to ram through the crucial measures required to bring the United States into collaboration with the three sovereign powers—China, Russia, and India—which defied the Empire.
Those measures fall into four steps: 1) bankruptcy reorganization; 2) emergency protective measures for the U.S. population; 3) a massive employment program to rebuild U.S. infrastructure; and 4) linking up with China, Russia, and India in their ongoing collaboration to rebuild the planet. We review the Constitutional basis, and necessity, for each of these measures, below.
Put together, this emergency program amounts to a patriotic defense of the United States from what has been a 60-plus year process of subversion, and attack, by the British Empire of finance. It has to be fought for in that fashion, because the life of our nation depends upon its implementation.
LaRouche said on Dec. 22:
"This has to be done in the first weeks in January.... This is emergency legislation, because if we don't do that, somewhere, maybe a little bit after the middle of January, or even possibly before, the whole system's coming down, if we don't do it, beforehand."
Since LaRouche's formulation of this program, a number of video presentations on the LaRouche January Plan have been made available on www.larouchepac.com, which dramatically summarize what must be done in the few weeks ahead. [See Emergency Actions for the mid-January Crisis; The LaRouche Plan for Economic Recovery Now; and The American Spirit of the Blue Collar Worker.]Here, we provide a complementary elaboration in print, highlighting the major steps required.
I. Bankruptcy Reorganization, Along Glass-Steagall Standards
"First of all, you agree that you're going to change the U.S. system, from a monetary system, which it is now, to a credit system."
Nothing can be done to reverse the collapse of the U.S., or world economy, without starting with a sweeping bankruptcy reorganization, which will put trillions of dollars of gambling debts which have been created by the British-dominated world monetary system, into the deep freeze, and thus clear the decks for the re-establishment of a sound credit system, based on the standard set by President Franklin D. Roosevelt: the Glass-Steagall standard.
First, the President must declare a national emergency. Then he must put the whole banking system, from the Federal Reserve on down, into bankruptcy, and start sorting out the mess.
The standard for reorganization was preeminently defined by the U.S. Constitution in its Preamble, which sets out the overriding principle of the General Welfare which governs the U.S. Constitution as a whole. It is in line with that principle that the specific powers of the Federal government are outlined, including that which gives the Congress, in Section 1, Article 8, the exclusive right to "coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin," and "to establish ... uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States." This Congressional power leaves no room for a foreign institution controlling the finances of the nation—as later occurred with Anglophile President Woodrow Wilson's creation of the approximation of a European-style central bank, the Federal Reserve system.
What was therefore established through the Constitution, and the subsequent institutions created by the first U.S. Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, to implement Constitutional objectives—especially the First National Bank—was a credit system, in which currencies issued were directly derived from the government's decisions to provide for the general welfare of its citizens.
2. The Glass-Steagall Act
Violations of this Constitutional system during the course of U.S. history are myriad—but, in the nation's existential crisis of 1932-33, Franklin Roosevelt acted to return to the standard set by the Constitution, by enacting the Glass-Steagall Act. Glass-Steagall set up a firewall between state and Federal commercial banks, and investment banks, which specialized in speculation in everything from commodities, to real estate, to what could be called a secondary market in debt.
What the Glass-Steagall Act said was, that a commercial bank, a bank that holds citizens' deposits, for example, and then uses those deposits for certain kinds of investments in the real economy—mortgages, etc.—that kind of bank cannot engage in speculative investments. And a series of regulations specified that these banks can have no proprietary role—in other words, the bank doesn't use the savings of citizens to make money on its own investments.
So, it's a complete firewall. There are two separate kinds of banks, and one can't engage in the activities of the other. The Roosevelt Administration also put in certain controls over interest rates that certain banks could pay, for example, savings & loans. This was a rigorous regulation, constraining commercial banking, that is, state and Federally chartered banks. It also created a certain separation between Federal and state banks. So that these things were completely regulated: that the banks had to be oriented toward investments in the real economy, and relatively limited. You couldn't sell the mortgages and securitize them, the way the banks have done today, and turn them into instruments for speculation.
But, to be clear: FDR's regulations worked, only after he declared a bank holiday, and sorted out the dross. In our case, we need bankruptcy reorganization first—then Glass-Steagall.
Once this standard is applied, there is no question about what will happen. Literally trillions of phony debt—including the bailout funds which were issued in order to protect the investment banks over the past two and a half years—will be wiped out. Debts that do not correspond to a Glass-Steagall standard will simply be set aside, and not honored. Legitimate debts, which correspond to payrolls, pension obligations, and the like, will be honored.
3. Bankruptcy Protection
Once again, we are applying a Constitutional principle—the principle of bankruptcy reorganization in favor of saving the productive capacity of the nation. Contrary to Europe, the United States had a tradition of permitting individuals, and eventually, corporations, as well, to be protected from their creditors in respect to their vital functions in service to the community. Whereas in Europe, going bankrupt was considered to be a crime, to be rewarded with debtors' prison, in the United States, bankruptcy reorganization could be used to relieve the bankrupt entity or person of immediate pressing debts, and permit the entity or individual to work their way out of penury.
On June 7, 1934, FDR signed the Corporate Reorganizations Act, which instituted bankruptcy protection for corporations "in line with the public interest." It called for freezing collection efforts against an entity, and maintaining that entity's ability to continue to operate. The entity is also permitted to obtain new credit necessary for ongoing operations, implicitly beginning with a clean slate, with the old debts in deep freeze. The purpose is to keep productive activity going, because it is in the interest of the community as a whole.
This is precisely the kind of protection which is required today for our bankrupt chartered banks, and for much of our industry, and many of our families as well. It's the kind of protection which was effectively applied by Alexander Hamilton for the nation as a whole, when he was organizing the finances of the young United States, which was saddled with unpayable debts following the Revolution, to be able to grow.
When FDR died, however, agents of the British monetarist system began to roll back his measures, culminating, in 1999, when Glass-Steagall was repealed altogether, effectively opening up the path for the unbridled looting which has brought us to the economic disintegration, and financial bankruptcy, we face today. Only a bankruptcy reorganization, which cancels the bailout and trillions more of illegitimate debt, can put us back on track.
WORLD RECOVERY POSSIBLE ONLY WITH A FOUR POWER AGREEMENT
Here are remarks Lyndon LaRouche made to a private luncheon in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 4, 2009.
http://www.larouchepub.com/lar/2009/3644...lunch.html
First of all, we have to accept the reality that the present world international monetary-financial system is crashing, and nothing will ever save this system. There will never be a recovery of this system, in the present form. However, bankruptcy reorganization is a part of life. And if a number of great powers were to agree to break the present system, and start a new system, a recovery would be possible.
Now, at the Rhodes conference which I attended [see LaRouche Rhodes conference speech], this came up, and it was rather important that I be there for that purpose. And because my record as an economist, particularly in forecasting, is, I must say, unmatched on the planet today, and therefore it was my job to present clearly what a Four-Power agreement among the United States, Russia, China, and India, and other countries brought into the same agreement, would mean for the planet. It would mean that we would have a convention, an agreement on forming a new system, scrapping the present monetary system, which can be scrapped because it is already bankrupt. There is no possibility, on this planet, ever, that the present monetary system of the world, will continue to exist. It will not exist. It is finished.
However, economy is not limited to monetary systems. A monetary system, especially when it's a free-trade system, which it's called today, is actually an international dictatorship, an empire of monetary power, which is not subjected to any nation's power. Nations create currency, and related credit, by their willingness to print money, or to do the same thing in terms of coinage. And that's a credit system. A monetary system, which has existed in the European model since about the time of the Peloponnesian war, has been a system of money which is above nations. Private interests, of banking interests, create a monetary system, which, by various manipulations, places itself in authority above nation-states. As distinct from what the American System prescribes, as a constitutional system, which is a credit system.
Under our Constitution, when followed, no international monetary system is allowed to dominate the United States. It is the utterance of credit, or currency as credit, by the United States government, which, according to the U.S. Constitution, is the only legitimate system which this nation can accept.
The United States is unique in that respect: in respect to the terms of its Constitution. Other parts of the world are conditioned to accept monetary systems, which rise above the power of nation states, to agreements made by private financial interests, which then dominate nation states. The IMF, which was really created to be a project piloted by Franklin Roosevelt, was transformed by Truman, and by Churchill, immediately into a world empire, an imperial international monetary system, financial system, not a credit system.
Cancel the Bubble
Now, we've come to the point, especially where the derivatives program, which was launched in 1987, with that derivatives program, we have created a wild-eyed international monetary bubble, which now goes to hundreds of trillions of dollars of nominal obligations—far more than any nation could ever repay. This monetary bubble, is now collapsing. Every part of the world is being more or less crushed by this, by this bubble. The only way to deal with it, is to do what has been done in times past, as was done by the American Revolution, in founding the United States: Cancel the bubble.
Now, we have a standard in the United States, which was implemented in a special form by Franklin Roosevelt, President Roosevelt, in 1933. It was called the Glass-Steagall Act. And the point was, that under a commercial banking system, regulated commercial banking systems, they would be protected by bankruptcy law, against exactly what has happened since 1987, under the U.S. Federal Reserve System, and its extension internationally.
So, this monetary bubble has grown to hundreds of trillions of dollars of nominal claims against humanity, far greater than any nation. And what you do is, by applying a Glass-Steagall principle, which is also a principle of the U.S. Constitution, you simply say you call a bankruptcy proceeding, and you look at those claims, those assets, those debts, which qualify under a Glass-Steagall standard, and you put those under bankruptcy protection. That debt is protected. It will be resolved, it can be negotiated, but it will still exist.
Those accounts which are purely monetary accounts, which do not meet a Glass-Steagall standard, are simply eliminated, by bankruptcy proceedings, as under U.S. bankruptcy law, constitutional bankruptcy law.
Thus, the United States, initiating a process which says we have a gross debt, a monetarist debt, on the world, which far exceeds everything the world can pay—it's a debt which is crushing nations, and looting them—and therefore, we have to free ourselves from that. And we simply apply the model of the Glass-Steagall, which was repealed by a skunk in the United States. But we reinstate this process, defend and reorganize the commercial banking systems, of nations and within nations. So that the banking systems function under a Glass-Steagall standard of protection.
This means we're defending national credit, and we're taking the monetarist speculation, financial derivatives and similar kinds of filth—we simply wipe it off the books. And somewhere in the range of $100 trillion of claims, is eliminated from the back of the planet.
What we have to do, then, is to go back to the other side of it. Use this concept of national banking, with protection for the private commercial banking systems, under bankruptcy protection. Under these conditions, by establishing a fixed-exchange-rate system among the participating nations, we can then utter long-term credit—I'm talking about 25- to 50-year credit, because to rebuild the world economy today, requires long-term investments based largely on large-scale infrastructure: that is, large-scale essential infrastructure projects will be the stimulus for rebuilding private industry, within economies. For example: water projects, large-scale rail projects, and so forth.
The Russia-China Agreements
Now, what happened in this process?
My function at Rhodes was in the economics program, to present my proposal, which was about 15 minutes. And, following this—and this involved, particularly, the relationship between Russia and China, which was the essential thing on which I was focussed in my presentation. Russia and China were on the verge of a negotiation, in this period, in which China has a trillion-dollar obligation of the United States, which is owed to China. This trillion-dollar debt of the United States, under the Obama Administration itself, in the present form, is essentially worthless. The collapse of a trillion-dollar obligation by the United States, to China, would be a disaster for China, and a chain-reaction, affecting the world as a whole.
So, what happened between the negotiations between Russia and China, was essentially an arrangement to utilize the legitimate debt which China is owed against the United States' promises, and to use that, to monetize it, by investing it in something productive, which would be useful for Asia. And a very large-scale project of transportation and related systems, was agreed upon between Russia and China.
The intent was not to stop there: The intent is to extend this kind of agreement to Southeast Asia generally, and to include India. The intention of some of us, is to bring the United States into the same arrangement. Because, the combined power of the United States, Russia, China, India, and nations who wish to be associated with them in this kind of venture, is the greatest financial, economic power on the planet. If that planetary power decides to do what must be done, we can reorganize and rebuild the world, and shift quickly from a downward process, into an upward process. That's our option.
The key thing has to be: the United States, Russia, China, and India. Without an agreement among those four nations, such a recovery of the world is not possible. With those four nations, and other nations—such as, immediately, Southeast Asia, Korea, Japan, and so forth—other nations come in, and now we're talking about the possibility of a general program, of creating a new, world fixed-exchange-rate system, as a credit system, not a monetary system, but a credit system of fixed-exchange rate agreements, for long-term cooperation, in infrastructure investments, which will be drivers for the development of productive investments.
By infrastructure, we mean, first of all, large-scale transportation: modern rail, and superior to rail [mag-lev], of land transport. The object is to be able to travel by land across Eurasia, through the Bering Strait, into the Americas, and through the Middle East, into all of Africa. We can thus make connections, in these kinds of mass transit, which are more efficient than water-borne transport, and which will be a driver for development in every area through which such rail and related systems travel. We can transport people more efficiently, and more quickly, in net effect, by this kind of rail system, than we can by aircraft. Aircraft systems are not so necessarily efficient—they seem attractive under some conditions.
So, this is what we have to do.
A Shocking Defeat for Obama
Now, we've had a change in the United States, which is relevant. The change was the election which occurred on Tuesday [Nov. 3]. This change is a shocking defeat for the present Obama Administration of the United States, and will become apparently so, very soon. The figures will be coming out. The Obama health-care program, which I've opposed, as it's genocidal, will be stopped. The cap-and-trade policy, which is opposed by some countries in Asia, in particular, will be stopped. We must go to basic economic infrastructure. We must rebuild the high-technology skills of people. We must provide employment for high-technology productive skills, and we must, above all, establish a general idea of a principle of negotiation of treaty agreements, long-term treaty agreements, among the nations of the world, and regions of the world.
For example: Take the case of Africa. Africa is a continent which has been condemned to be looted. And it's still being looted. If you take a nighttime view of Africa, as if from satellite, and you're looking for light in Africa, in what percentile of the total territory of Africa do you see light, at nightime? As opposed to other parts of the world. Look at the water resources of Africa. How are these reassorted, how are they maintained? As opposed to other parts of the world which have had development.
So therefore, the development of Africa, which does have large resources in terms of raw materials, especially in the Southern [African] Shield [mineral belt]—that area has to be developed. Therefore, by a global development, which includes and understands our mutual interest in the development of Africa, we can attack that problem.
We have tundra areas, as in Siberia, as in northern Canada—in Canada generally. Again, large areas of resources. Now, this is an area where Russia is particularly useful, because my friends in the Vernadsky Institute in Moscow, are the greatest world authorities on dealing with tundra areas for this kind of project. They are the students of Vernadsky, and they know how to do this. So therefore, if we aim for the Bering Strait tunnel, and for related development, the whole area of the Arctic, which is thinly populated, very thinly populated, and almost unmanageable, can be managed and developed. This contains essential mineral resources, which are needed by the world at large, right now.
Especially, areas like China. China lacks resources of this type, in its own territory. Only through going to the northern tundra area, do we get the kind of resources that are needed, to meet the demands of Asia, in general.
Similarly, only by taking this area of the Northern Shield in the Americas, do you have a similar kind of development, and so forth.
So therefore, there are common areas, like Africa, like this area, which need to be developed in order to meet the requirements of humanity in the time to come.
Now, with the fact that the Obama Administration's present program has been shot down in disgrace, in the Tuesday election, means that the United States is going to be much more receptive to innovations. Because, the majority of the American people, probably 80%, are really, in point of fact, opposed to these policies which Obama has represented. We saw that in the demonstrations in August. But those demonstrations in August were continuing, in the minds of the people. But these are ordinary people. It's a phenomenon like what was described by Rosa Luxemburg, for example, as a mass strike. A case where there's a spontaneous reaction, by a people, against oppression.
We saw this, for example, in East Germany, in 1989, especially in that area, where the mass strike of the people, the spontaneous reaction of people, saying "We are the people, you must listen to us, and care for our concerns."
And we're now at a point, where that's true around the world. It's true inside the United States. But the people in a mass strike movement are not violent people. They're not flaming conspiratorial revolutionaries. They're simply people saying, "We are the people. And you have to pay some attention to our concerns. You have to respond to our concerns, and listen to our concerns, and talk with us about this."
What happened in the recent election, on Tuesday, the mass strike inside the U.S. population, which had never gone away, since August, suddenly expressed itself in the first election which was available for them, to express their contempt for both the Republican and the Democratic parties. And that's the election result which occurred yesterday.
An End to Globalization
So, under these circumstances, where the Obama Administration is now in deep trouble, where Russia understands its problem, where China understands its problem, where India is sympathetic to this problem, where Japan is eager to participate, where Korea will automatically participate—means that we have the basis for a consensus among nations, to put this whole monetary system through bankruptcy reorganization, establish a fixed exchange rate of credit systems among sovereign nations, and start to put together what we can recognize as are the major projects needed to build the foundations of real physical economic growth throughout this planet.
We must also recognize the importance in this, contrary to some of these universalists, these world government kind of freaks, that we need to have a system of sovereign nation-states, not a global system. We now have a terrible system, which has developed especially over the past 40 years, of globalization. Virtually no country controls as much as 80% of all its requirements, within its own territory. We used to have a system in which nations were sovereign, in the sense that they grew enough food and other essentials to maintain their population. That, if one nation went under, other nations would survive, because they had the protection of sovereignty, of national sovereignty.
Globalization is the enemy of mankind, because it's the enemy of culture. It's the enemy of a people's sense of its own national identity. The only real solutions are those which recognize national identity, national peculiarities, but on that very basis of difference, are able to cooperate, under mutual protection, in behalf of the interests of them all.
And that's what we must do.
As I say, we have reached a point, with the defeat of Obama, and it was a major defeat of Obama in the Tuesday election. His entire leading program was shot down in flames, by the voters. And the Republicans benefitted, in one sense, because the Democrats were more defeated than the Republicans. But it's both parties who have failed. And what was expressed was the way in which a mass strike, the American people, or a very large part of them, expressed, again, using the polls this time, to deliver the same message they delivered in August, throughout these meetings that were held by Congressmen and their contituents, then.
So, it's not guaranteed. Nothing is ever guaranteed in history. But the opportunities are provided. And it's up to statesmen to utilize the opportunities, for the benefit of their own nation, and for mankind. We've come into such a time, where that is the leading consideration. Because this planet cannot continue the way it's going.
We have 6.7 billion people on this planet, estimated, now. We have a potential ability to support a population of about 2 billion people, if you count all the things that are being lost. The water resources that are going down. All the other kinds of things that are going down. We're going into a tragedy.
It's not necessary to have a tragedy. What Russia and China have done is a sparkplug. It's the opening of a gate. There are meetings now with Russia and India, meetings in Southeast Asia, and others. The opening is now for the United States, to change its policy from what it's been recently, and to become, again, the United States which our founders of this nation, defended and demanded.
And we have to proceed from the standpoint of respect for the sovereignty of the individual nation-state, its cultural sovereignty, its political sovereignty. But at the same time, for cooperation to mutual advantage, among these nations, in common interest, for common causes. I believe that under those circumstances, it's still possible to save this nation, to save this republic, to save this world. And that's what I think is worth doing. I can't guarantee the success, but that's all I can think of that's worth doing.