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WE'RE NOW AT THE MOMENT OF TRUTH

Here are Lyndon LaRouche's remarks to the EIR Staff in Wiesbaden, Germany, on May 23. An extended discussion followed, a small part of which follows LaRouche's opening statement.

Europeans are used to parliamentary systems; and when they talk about the U.S. Congress, they talk about parliament; when they talk about U.S. politics, they talk about parliamentary systems. The United States system is a republic, it is not a parliamentary system. It's a unique kind of a republic. There's nothing like it, anywhere else in the world.

For example: the case of the Senate. The Senate has three elections in a six-year period. Every two years, one-third of the Senate is elected. Now, that means that the Senate never goes out of business. Because the Senate always continues one-third, approximately (there may be a death or something else going on), but otherwise, only one-third of the Senate is replaced at any time. So, during this six-year period, there's an unbroken continuity of the Senate.

The Senate is very significant. It's not like a European Senate, or a European upper body. The Senate has the authority, chiefly, of "advice and consent." It is the essential control mechanism over the Presidency. Certain things, like the appointments of Federal judges, the confirmation of other positions, can not be undertaken without the consent of the Senate.

Now, the consent of the Senate must be such that, if more than one-third of the Senators withhold consent, under the Constitution, the consent is not given. Appointment of ambassadors—if more than one-third of the Senators oppose it, it can not happen.

Now, what's happening is an attempt, at this point, to overturn the authority of the Senate and to reduce it to a parliamentary institution. Which gives you the same kind of problem you get in Europe, where you have parliamentary institutions and they don't function in a time of crisis. See, the other side—even though we have a Federal Reserve System, we don't have the disease you have in Europe. In Europe, there are no governments: The governments exist by consent of independent central banking systems, which means that the banking systems can overthrow the government. It can't happen like that in the United States—even with the Federal Reserve System, which is a form of corruption.

So therefore, our politics are different from those of Europe.

Now, in this present crisis, Europe by itself, including Russia, could actually do nothing to forestall and defeat the presently onrushing world crisis—nothing. Because we're dealing in Europe with parliamentary systems and traditions, which will not allow the effective kind of action to be taken. The only thing you get in Europe, instead of a constitutional control over a crisis: You may get a coup d'état, you may get an overthrow of the government by force; or by some trickery of that type. You may get a dictatorship. But, in the United States, we've never had a dictatorship. Because, the process of changing the government is such, that it's accessible to the constitutional institutions.

Now, what we're doing now—and I'm in the center of it; I'm in on the planning of it, so I know what's going on; that is, I'm working with leading Senators and others who are planning what we're doing. Now, we don't know what's going to happen. It's like war: You don't know what's going to happen. Anybody who tells you what's going to happen—if you've got inside information you can predict what's going to happen—tell them to shut up and go away. They don't know a damned thing. Nobody knows. I don't know, and I probably know more than anybody in Europe does. So, if somebody tells you the situation is "doomed," that this is going to happen; they tell you it's about Supreme Court judges or things like that, it's not true. It's nonsense. It's gossip.

Shultz: The Oligarch

What it's about, is the attempt by a would-be Hjalmar Schacht, George Pratt Shultz, the man who created the Bush Administration, who crafted it; the man who picked Condi Rice, who used to be a coach of an all-male football team (if you could know what kind of raw interests she had!). She never got married: How could you marry a whole football team? You can exercise 'em, but you can't marry them.

Anyway, so she and the rest of them were all picked by George Pratt Shultz.

What is George Pratt Shultz? Well, he's the third generation of a European oligarchy, American division. His great-grandfather was a Pratt, one of the oligarchs. His grandfather was one of the oligarchs. His father was an oligarch. He's an oligarch. He's tied to the international Synarchist group, that is, the financier groups' interests. He's the guy who actually put Pinochet, a Nazi, into dictatorship in Chile. That's the kind of guy he is.

So, he's a representative for the banking community, which is determined to do, what? They're determined to do what Schacht was determined to do, under orders from London, from the Bank of England, in Germany. Remember what happened: First step was, the system was not going to work. The Young Plan was not going to work. So what did they do? They formed the Bank for International Settlements. This dealt with the problem of the war debt and so on, in Europe. Then, the power, therefore, the financial power was now concentrated in the Bank for International Settlements, as the center of a network of banks of the Synarchist system. Which still exists, by the way. Interesting, hmm?

So, as this was being formed, Schacht left the position in the German government, that is, the bank, and went into semi-retirement to be part of the Young Plan apparatus, which created the Bank for International Settlements. When the Bank for International Settlements was formed, all banking power in Europe was politically controlled through the Bank for International Settlements, of which Schacht was an agent!

These guys went through everything, with Brüning, von Papen, and so forth—and put Hitler into power!

Now, what did they do when they put Hitler into power? They put him in the Chancellory. He was considered a joke, by people who didn't take the world seriously. So, Goering set fire to the Reichstag. And two days later, you had a Notverordnung [Emergency Decree], and you had a dictatorship that didn't quit, until the end of April in 1945.

What you're getting now, in the United States, is, you're getting an attempt to move preemptively to establish a dictatorship of the Presidency—now! Not of the Supreme Court—the Presidency. Now. And the President is not the President; the President is the idiot who is swinging from the rafters inside the Oval Office. The Presidency is a group of people, including Karl Rove, the ideologue, sitting in the White House as a committee, which is actually running the Presidency. And the committee says: I'm the number one enemy of the committee. That I've organized the Democratic Party to resist and stand up, which is true. I did.

We've gone through a number of things. Now, we've got a fighting organization. We don't know what's going to happen! I know that our people, the Senators involved, are doing the right thing: They're going to fight. The question is, we've got to look at six guys on the Republican side (there are actually nine, potentially): Are six going to lose their nerve, or not? If they don't lose their nerve, we win. That's all we need. Six votes and we can block the thing.

So, that's where we are. We're at a point of a power struggle. If we win, this thing is beaten, for the time being. If we win, the situation in Europe changes. If we win, Schröder's situation begins to look excellent for the fall. Because there's no bullshit in what Müntefering is doing.

The key problem that Schröder has, is the Greenies! You can not organize a government that will hold together, if you have any Greenies in it! And the CDU [Christian Democrats] were a bunch of fascists or worse, with a few exceptions here and there.

So therefore, the problem is, you have to have a panic situation, where you can form a government under conditions of emergency, and you don't have to have Greenies. That's Schröder's problem. Because if he's got a re-election of a Greenie coalition, you don't have a government! These guys are fascists! And they'll do everything possible to sabotage any effort to make reforms which are essential for recovery.

So, the only thing that's going to change the situation in Europe—the French are a bunch of whores, as usual. There're some good French, but there are a lot of whores over there, too. And they're very specialized in whores. You know, France is the country that invented modern prostitution: They call it a Parliament. So, you're not going to get anything from that. You're getting a revolt in France, because they smell something, and they smell opportunity. They smell a problem in the right wing in the government, and they're seeing if maybe they can get back in power.

But, something good will happen in Europe, if Europe sees something coming out of the United States, which means a change in the strategic situation. And the whole game is to get that effect, because you won't get it from it Europe, because Europe is run by parliamentary systems. Parliamentary systems can not deal with a crisis of this type, except if they get inspiration from the outside. And the only place they're going to get relevant inspiration is from the United States. And for that to come, you have to have a change in the direction in the United States.

Now, the Democratic leadership in the Senate—the House of Representatives has more like a parliamentary quality—but the Senate, as I said, is a different kind of institution. The Senators are serious. They're ready to fight. And they are fighting. You would be astonished at what some of these guys are saying and are doing. They're ready to fight. It's just a question: Do we have the margin to win? So, we're going to a war we might lose. But we're going to a war. And the next two days are going to be crucial.

Don't worry about the judges. It's not a judge issue. That's the propaganda being spread—forget the propaganda. It's the issue of making an immediate dictatorship of the Presidency.

The GM Crisis

Why? They had a schedule, which was the summer: That the GM crisis impact wouldn't hit until summer. It hit the next week! The sequence was: I gave this webcast. We had, coming alive on the webcast, we had several committees of the Senate, which were asking me to answer questions on how to deal with this crisis. We got into a serious dialogue on the question of the GM and related crisis. What happened is, suddenly, this word came out—and even Bill Clinton was taken in by it, who should have known better: "No, it's not going to happen. There won't be anything until mid-summer. The bankers are going to control it. They're going to unwind the liabilities, the credit derivatives liabilities. They're going to unwind them. And then, in mid-summer, when we've extricated a lot of the hedge funds from the explosion, then we'll let the thing go down! And it will all be nicely managed."

Two weeks after this bullshit came out—the thing collapsed. And it's now in a process of collapse. They're collapsing! They're collapsing left and right! What they do, is they carry the corpses out, and put them in the deep freeze, and then bring the next one in. And they're dying, one after the other, these hedge funds! They're falling! But, they stick 'em in the deep freeze, so you won't know they're dead. That's what's happening.

In the meantime, there's a crumbling of structure: So that, you have a potential explosion at any moment. This thing can blow—it can blow out at any moment. And this will not be a 1929. This will be a collapse. A total collapse. A sudden, total collapse. It could be a few days or so forth, but it will be a precipitous collapse, not a depression. But an actual breakdown crisis.

Now, the rush is: Who's going to be in charge, when the breakdown crisis hits? If the Congress is in charge, if the Congress's powers remain—and these are largely the "advice and consent" powers of the Senate—if those powers remain, then there's going to be a reaction from the elected government which is going to demand FDR-style responses to the crisis. Therefore, the rush is on, to establish the dictatorship before the collapse occurs.

So it's not the next year's Federal judge thing. Don't buy that story. That's a piece of propaganda, to get people thrown off the track. This is a move for dictatorship. These days now are a moment in history, which you may wish to remember, or might wish you couldn't remember—one of the two. Because, out of this, somewhere in this process, someone is going to be defeated: It's either going to be the effort to stop the establishment of a dictatorship, which will mean things will go in a good direction; or, it's going to mean a dictatorship, a Nazi-style dictatorship.

At that point, then, your religious nuts come into play, because the religious nuts in the United States are your potential fascist movement. That's the character of the United States, that's where you get a fascist movement—is from the right-wing Catholics and the right-wing Protestants—these crazies. And they're about the same thing. There's really no difference between them. It's just that one sleeps on the right side, and one sleeps on the left side. But they're the same thing.

So, that's where we are.

So, as I say, this is not a time for pessimism. It's is a time for a healthy dose of fear. Not enough fear to tremble and freeze, but enough fear to realize you have to fight.

Now, we have a pretty good mobilization going in the States right now. We kicked some butt this past week, and we're kicking it this weekend. So, we've got a real mobilization, the best we can do. And we're working closely with the people in the Senate and elsewhere, who are working on this case. And we know, the leaders of the Senate know what the crisis is.

Forget the bullshit you get from the European press and from the gossip. Forget the pessimism you're getting about Germany, here in Germany; the only reason for pessimism in Germany is fear that we lose the fight in the United States. Because, if we turn the situation in the United States, then you'll find options will open up in Europe. Otherwise, they won't.

Russia, for example, will react. With a coup like this in the United States, against this Bush nonsense, Russia will react. Russia wants agreements with Europe, as part of its Eurasian agreements. Right now, they're kissing Bush's ass—they hate his guts, but they're kissing his ass. Because, they say, "We used to be a superpower. The United States is a used-to-be superpower. We used-to-be superpowers have got to get together, and get a feeling of being superpowers again—a partnership." And so therefore, Putin is looking for this kind of ante. But they hate the United States! They don't like it—they hate it! But they want to go to bed with it! Like the guy who wants to marry this woman because he hates her; he's going to make her suffer.

But, if a change occurs so that you get optimism, about political options, freedom to exert political options in Europe, and you find a direction coming out of the United States in the direction of a general need for an economic recovery globally, then you'll get some positive reactions in Europe. Without something from the United States, I don't think it's possible.

So again: Don't be pessimistic. That'll kill you. Be optimistic in spirit, but have a healthy respect for fear. And we can win.

It's a very refreshing change that's gone on around me in the United States in recent times. I'm rather pleased with it. I had to create a few bloody noses here and there in our own organization to do it, but we did it. And we're getting some improvements.

So, that's where we stand. We're now at the moment of truth. This may not be the last moment of truth, but it's one right before us, right now. And that's what you have to understand. It's fun—good, healthy war.

'Strategic Bankruptcy'

Q: Concerning this fight, if the Senate now wins against the Cheney gang, would this mean in effect that the Senate is now in power and not the President? And would they have the power to dictate a New Bretton Woods?

LaRouche: No, it wouldn't go that way. But New Bretton Woods is a concept which you need as a propagandistic conception of what we have to do. You know, in which you have to have a target, what you want to do. What you will get, you don't really know. So, the broad outlines—not over-specification—but the broad outlines of the principle. And when you say "Franklin Roosevelt," that makes it. Because that tells people what your philosophy is, what kind of thing you're going for.

So, what we have, in the situation here, in the U.S. now, is different than it was before. The problems are different. Then we had a depression. Now we're faced with a precipitous general collapse. We're faced with a breakdown crisis, not a depression. That means, forget money, in the ordinary sense. You're not going to "arrange" the money, in such a way that you're going to bring the accounts into order.

You're going to do much more arbitrary methods. You're going to freeze things. You're going to freeze debt. You're going to make sure that the money is available to keep essential functions functioning. You're going to make sure the money exists, the credit exists to expand employment—things of that sort. So, you're going to go to a managed economy, based on the principles of the General Welfare. And the fact that you need a recovery. That's what we'll be heading toward.

Now, we have in the Senate—and everything is kind of open to me on this one—that, what I proposed as a general recovery approach, is a conception which is accepted by most of the leaders of the Democratic side of the Senate: that we have to organize a recovery, an FDR-style recovery. Clinton, who is running around in Europe, dealing with the tsunami thing, also agrees with that. What that means, he's not sure. But he's sure that something like that is needed—what it is, he doesn't know. It's unclear in his mind. And that's true of a lot of the others.

But, once they get in the direction, they will buy—for example, Harry Reid, who is the Democratic leader in the Senate: A tough guy, very important that he is a tough guy; he's put some spine into this thing. And, on the idea of using infrastructure projects, here; on the idea of what I'm working on, defining a package of infrastructure—in other words, you can't just go slapping projects in, because you've got limited resources, so you've got to set a package of projects, which are compatible, could conform to the resources, what you can do: These guys will put it through.

So, if it comes to emergency legislation, and designing a package of recovery programs, which will be equitably distributed through the states and so forth—that will come out of that.

The committees in the Congress, in general, the large, major committees, are generally pretty good people. Many of these guys have been in the Federal government on committee positions in one place or another, over a period of 20-30 years. So, these are senior people, much more senior, much more experienced than most of the members of Congress. And these committees are a repository of knowledge. Want to know how to do something? They've got it somewhere in the filing cabinet. It's all worked out. They've been through it before; they know it.

So what you would get, you get an immediate juggernaut type of effect, in a panic situation, where they would be going out with legislation. And the most significant thing from that standpoint that I've written, is my paper on "Strategic Bankruptcy." Because that was what they needed. They were unclear, until they read this thing on strategic bankruptcy, as to how we would deal with this problem. And that's the way we'll go—because they said that's what they like.

So, if we win, we know we're going to have to go in that direction....