- Following up the previous calls of 1997, 2000, and 2006,
in which thousands of prominent personalities from all over the world,
among them former heads of state, members of parliaments, unionists, entrepreneurs,
city officials, church members, members of the military, and so forth,
demanded a reorganization of the world financial system, the Chairwoman
of the Schiller Institute, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, has written the following
new call, which will be circulated worldwide by the Schiller Institute.
It should be published on the Internet and in various newspapers with the
names of the signers, and will be presented to the American Congress and
the parliaments of the world.
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- The systemic crash of the world financial system is in
full swing. Shaken loose but not caused by the collapse of the subprime
mortgage market in the U.S. and the end of the inflationary yen-carry-trade
in Japan, the house of cards of "creative financial instruments,"
as Alan Greenspan has dubbed various credit derivatives, has thereby caved
in. Because the takeover craze on the part of the hedge funds and private
equity funds has been rising higher and higher over the recent years and
months with ever wilder predatory raids, the investment banks which have
financed the majority of these takeovers, are now left sitting on these
worthless credits. More U.S. mortgage financiers will declare insolvency,
more banks will go under in the vortex of the credit crisis. In the U.S.
there are currently almost 10 trillion dollars in mortgage loans, over
a third of which are bad credit risks. In Germany the examples of the IKB-Bank
and the Westdeutsche LandesBank have shown that boards of directors are
finding it hard to admit the quantity of their losses.
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- The myth that the central banks have an endless number
of possibilities to always bring a crash under control, is exploding: they
now find themselves between the Scylla of the fight against inflation with
higher interest rates--which is urgent in the face of the obvious inflation
of food, raw materials and oil, but would lead to bubbles like that of
the U.S. mortgage market, and the like, bursting even more,--and the Charybdis
of the credit crisis, which has been unleashed by the reversed leverage
collapse. If the central banks try to stop a chain reaction by infusing
liquidity in the range of hundreds of billions, as just occurred within
24 hours during the second week of August, this only means that there will
be a hyperinflation like that in Weimar Germany 1923--only this time not
in one country, but worldwide.
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- It is a dilemma from which there is no way out: the system
is finished.
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- Catastrophic consequences are threatened for the world
population. If countries can no longer finance their functions, societies
threaten to sink into chaos. The model of so-called globalization is today
totally bankrupt, just as the communist model was in 1989-91. All the principles
which are associated with it, such as "outsourcing" (that is,
the shifting of highly qualified jobs into cheap-production countries),
"shareholder value" society, "money-makes-money," "just-in-time"
production, "benchmarking," etc. have been rejected. The condition
of collapsing infrastructure in the G-7 countries is the best indicator
of the wreckage of the unregulated free market economy.
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- In order to stop the intolerable suffering which an uncontrolled
collapse of the world financial system threatens to unleash on the population,
we, the undersigned, demand, the immediate convoking of an emergency conference
which must decide on a new global financial architecture in the tradition
of the Bretton Woods System initiated by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944.
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- We, the undersigned, also point out, that the Italian
Parliament has taken up LaRouche's proposal, and in a resolution on April
6, 2005, called on the Italian government to convene "an international
conference at the level of Heads of State and Government, to globally define
a new and more just monetary and financial system."
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- The necessity for such a fundamental reorganization is
all the more urgent today, but the potential for its realization has also
grown. For an irony of history is responsible: Because when the Soviet
Union began to unravel in 1991, the neo-conservatives in the government
of President George Bush, Sr., decided to transform the American republic,
according to the "Project for a New American Century," into an
empire. This "force doctrine" rested on the proposition, that
neither one nation, nor a group of nations, could be allowed to threaten
the dominant position of the United States, in a political, economic, or
military respect.
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- But now the neo-conservatives in the Bush/Cheney regime,
with their policy of preventive war and regime change, have ensured that
the process of cooperation among the nations of Eurasia and Latin America,
which normally would have taken decades, has accelerated, under the influence
of the American unilateralist policy. An array of heads of state of important
countries have made it clear, that they have decided to defend the general
welfare of their populations against the encroachment of the financial
institutions associated with globalization. Therefore, the chances of putting
the question of a just new world economic order on the agenda, have enormously
increased.
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- But it would be a dangerous illusion to believe that
a successful reorganization of the bankrupt world financial system could
succeed without, or against, the United States. Therefore, we, the undersigned,
declare ourselves in favor of cooperation with the "real" America,
in the tradition of the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence,
that America which is connected with names such as Alexander Hamilton,
John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Martin Luther
King, and which is inspired by Lyndon LaRouche today. America must be a
part of the new community of principle of sovereign republics, which is
bound together through the common interests of mankind.
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- In recent months Lyndon LaRouche has pointed out again
and again that only the combination of a transformed America, together
with Russia, China, and India, would be strong enough to put the question
of a new monetary system on the agenda. But that does not mean that other
nations could and should not participate as partners with these four large
nations.
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- In order to correct the failures of development, which
have occurred due to the paradigm shift of the past 40 years, and above
all, since the abandonment of the system of fixed exchange rates by U.S.
President Richard Nixon, in 1971, and which led, after the dissolution
of the Soviet Union, with unrestrained globalization, to today's brutal
vulture capitalism, we must implement the following measures:
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- The emergency conference for a New Bretton Woods must
immediately thus resolve:
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- 1. The current world financial system must be declared
hopelessly bankrupt and be replaced by a new one.
- 2. A system of fixed exchange rates must be agreed upon
immediately.
- 3. Derivatives speculation must be prohibited through
an agreement among governments.
- 4. There must be put into effect a comprehensive reorganization,
or, as the case may be, a stretching-out of debts.
- 5. There must be put in place new credit lines, through
state credit creation, in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton and the American
System, which will make possible productive full employment, through investments
in basic infrastructure and technological revival.
- 6. The completion of the Eurasian Land-Bridge, as the
kernel of the reconstruction of the world economy, is thus the vision which
will not only bring about an economic miracle, but also can become a system
of peace for the 21st Century.
- 7. A new "Treaty of Westphalia" must guarantee
the opening up and development of raw materials for all nations on this
Earth, for at least the next 50 years.
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- We, the undersigned, are of the belief that the system
of "globalization," with its brutal vulture capitalism, has economically,
financially, and morally failed. In its place, man must again be put in
the center, and the economy must serve the general welfare first and foremost.
The new economic order must guarantee the inalienable rights of all mankind
on this planet.
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- Signed:
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- Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Federal chairwoman of the BueSo
and the Schiller Institute
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