Ibero-American News Digest

London's Brazil Bubble Is Popping

May 21 (EIRNS)—Just as Lyndon LaRouche warned, the fraud of the great Brazilian economic "boom" is going down the tubes, with the general global "unwinding" of the carry trade which sustained it. (Australia, another carry trade favorite, is also being hit). The Brazilian corporate bond market collapsed to zero three weeks ago, and no bonds have been offered since, according to a Bloomberg wire today, because investors are demanding more than companies wish to pay. The cost of credit default swaps on Brazilian debt is climbing, and the government sold only 19% of the fixed-rate bonds they put up for sale yesterday. $1.64 billion in foreign money has pulled out of Brazil's stock exchange so far in 2010, with more than half of that—$960 million—leaving since May 1.

Even as he lies about Brazil being "decoupled" from the international crisis because of its foreign exchange reserves and (debt-driven) domestic growth, Brazilian Central Bank chief Henrique Meirelles reported that Brazil's banking system froze up after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in September 2008, because 20% of the country's credit comes from "cross-border lending." That is, without the foreign speculative flows, Brazil goes under.

As for Brazil's "reserves cushion" of $250 billion, Rio de Janeiro's Monitor Mercantil, citing the Citizen's Debt Audit group in Brazil, reported on May 17 that those reserves are only a quarter of the $1 trillion worth of liquid assets which can be converted into dollars and flee the country at a moment's notice.

The good news is, that LaRouche's May 20 "Emergency Call to Shut Down Derivatives and Impose Glass-Steagall" is now circulating in Brazil and the rest of the Portuguese-speaking world.

Without LaRouche's Program, Haiti Condemned to Genocide

May 23 (EIRNS)—The failure to implement the emergency measures proposed by Lyndon LaRouche in the immediate aftermath of Haiti's Jan. 12 earthquake—including use of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to relocate 1.5 to 2 million people out of Port-au-Prince—has turned this capital into a death camp.

Moreover, the "development" perspective that the international community has proposed for Haiti is based on slave-labor textile assembly plants—the infamous maquiladoras so common in Mexico and Central America—with a minimum wage that doesn't come close to meeting even the barest of necessities. "Experts" say Haitians should only look toward tourism as a desirable national income-generator.

There are still 1.5 million people living in tent cities, under the filthiest of conditions, vulnerable to the rapid spread of infectious disease while trying to protect themselves from mudslides and flooding in the rainy season that has begun. According to Haitian doctor Jean William Pape, of the Haitian Group for the Study of Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections (GHESKIO), the top priority now must be relocating the 1.5 million citizens living in tents to safer housing. This is what LaRouche said had to be done in early February!

Dr. Pape warns that failure to do this could result in a "typhoid plague" of incalculable proportions. "The tent situation is an ideal way to transmit diseases, including tuberculosis. The threat of outbreaks remains high unless the government is very quickly able to move people into better housing conditions and where there is no risk of flooding."

The Infectious Disease Special Edition website observed today that distribution of medical and other aid is uneven and often chaotic, given the plethora of competing NGOs and no centralized command center with an overview of the situation.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently reported that respiratory infections have now replaced trauma or injury as the leading reason for visits to the country's health clinics since the earthquake. The rainy season brings with it increased threats of malaria, dengue, and typhoid carried by mosquitoes. Potable water is virtually nonexistent, and human excrement runs through the streets—ideal conditions for the spread of disease.

The Red Cross has extended its operations in the country to an unprecedented 12 months—normally it would be three to six in a natural disaster situation. In the capital, the Red Cross is running much of the sewage system, absent functioning government ministries or other agencies that should take responsibility for this.

LaRouche: Argentina's Natural Wealth Can Benefit All Mankind

May 23 (EIRNS)—As Argentina enters its third century as a sovereign nation—it is currently celebrating the bicentennial anniversary of its founding on May 25, 1810—Lyndon LaRouche noted today that this nation is one that is rich in a variety of natural resources, much as Russia is. And, he pointed out, as is also true in Russia's case, this wealth can be used not only for domestic industrial development, but for the benefit of all mankind, provided Argentina commits itself to dumping the axioms of the currently moribund imperial monetarist system and embraces the principles of a physical economic system to guarantee its—and the world's—long-term development.

At a site built especially for the Bicentennial, along Buenos Aires's famous 9th of July Avenue, the LaRouche Youth Movement is distributing a leaflet to the tens of thousands of citizens participating in the celebration. Delegations from Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil are also present, at the invitation of the Fernández de Kirchner government.

Entitled, "Argentina at the Tricentennial: Forging a World of Sovereign Nation-States," the leaflet calls on "all patriots at the tricentennial which is just beginning, to defend the Republic and promote the necessary changes that will allow humanity to emerge from this great world economic crisis. The future is in our hands, if we succeed in tossing out the current monetarist axioms and concentrate on increasing the productive power of labor."

"We need large-scale and high-tech infrastructure development capable of integrating our planet in a physical-economic sense, as sovereign nations that cooperate toward a single goal of the general welfare," the leaflet states. "This is immediately feasible through a credit system, such as Hamilton's American System, rather than a monetary system as we now have. We can do this. Put people back to work!"

In 1810, when every Spanish colonial government declared their independence, after Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the Spanish King Fernándo VII, there was enormous sympathy for the American System of political economy throughout the entire region—from Mexico in the North down to Argentina in the South. Even before 1810, there were contacts between governments, or political factions in each country, and the United States, and U.S. delegations frequently traveled to Central and South America to encourage the nascent pro-American sentiment.

It was this connection that the British Empire sought to destroy, vowing never to allow another sovereign republic like the United States to come into being in the New World. The Hapsburg presence abetted the British goal. Hence the LYM's challenge to Argentines to ensure that its tricentennial celebration, 100 years from now, will see "a world of sovereign nation-states," liberated from the British Empire. "We will do this," the leaflet states, "in defense of the universal principles of right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, found in the Constitution of the first sovereign republic in history."

Argentina To Double Food Production by 2016

May 16 (EIRNS)—Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner on May 14 presented her government's 2010-16 Strategic Agricultural Plan, one of whose goals is to double food production by 2016, with 148 million tons of grains.

This echoes the call made by Helga Zepp-LaRouche in May 2008, in the midst of a global food crisis.

The announced plan proposes to increase land under cultivation by 20%, along with a "relative reduction" in soybean production, which under the control of such predatory food cartels as Cargill has expanded enormously in Argentina in recent years—to the detriment of more traditional food crops.

The 2010-16 plan focusses on food sovereignty, and the role of the state in guaranteeing that no one in Argentina goes hungry.