This Week You Need To Know

We Need a New Bretton Woods To Defeat the Evil of Globalization

Here is the keynote address of Lyndon LaRouche to the June 27 EIR seminar in Berlin.

In this period of time, we're in a world crisis without parallel. There's no comparison to this in European history, since the 14th-Century New Dark Age, to what we're facing now. All the things since then, in terms of crises in European experience, have been less crucial than was the case in the 14th-Century New Dark Age.

But that New Dark Age is also a benchmark. Because, to understand the crisis we have today, and to understand how the solution must be designed, we must understand why a New Dark Age struck Europe in the 14th Century, to be prepared for the new dark age which is, right now, descending upon the entire world. There are solutions for this problem. But you have to understand the rules of the game, by which solutions work out.

So that, when people talk about "New Bretton Woods"—many people talk about it. But even the gentleman from Iran who recently wrote on this subject, and then asked, "Well, what do you mean by 'New Bretton Woods'?"—that is a very good question. Because, New Bretton Woods signifies that, at the end of World War II, the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, established a monetary system, a fixed-exchange-rate monetary system, without which the world would not have recovered from the effects of World War II. This monetary system was crucial.

Now, the intention of the original Bretton Woods system, by Roosevelt, and the conduct of the Bretton Woods policy by his successor Truman, were two opposite conceptions, united by one common feature, a temporary, fixed-exchange-rate monetary system.

Roosevelt was an American; Truman was really not. He was born in the United States, but it was like a disease that infected us—he was not really a good American.

Roosevelt was committed to overturning the policies of the United States from the assassination of one President [McKinley]; the inauguration of Teddy Roosevelt; the inauguration of another fascist, Woodrow Wilson; the inauguration of fools—Coolidge was an evil fool; Hoover who was not a fool, but who was corrupt. So, the United States from 1901-1902 until 1933 was run by a policy entirely contrary to the Constitutional prescription of the United States....

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