CALL FOR A REFERENDUM IN GERMANY
Return to the D-Mark
and Economic Sovereignty
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the chair of the Civil Rights Solidarity Movement (BüSo), issued this videotaped address to the citizens of Germany on Sept. 9. It is also being circulated as a leaflet.
Dear Citizens of Germany,
Time has run out. Jürgen Stark, who resigned today as chief economist of the European Central Bank (ECB), is now the second German (following Bundesbank head Axel Weber), to jump ship. Both have thrown in the towel, so the guardians of stability at the ECB have pretty much gone.
The reason for the resignation is that the ECB has been shifting more and more toward buying toxic bonds—not only from Portugal, Greece, and Ireland, but now also from Spain and Italy. And this policy leads directly to hyperinflation. The ECB has in fact become Europe's "bad bank." Apparently there was a conflict between ECB chief Claude Trichet, who clearly serves the interest of the British Empire (meaning the financial oligarchy), and those who still take the Charter of the ECB seriously, i.e., that its only task is to ensure the stability of the euro.
Putting together this pushing and shoving at the ECB with the cacophony in the EU, there is only one conclusion to be drawn: The euro experiment has failed! Let us remember that the euro was imposed on Germany as the price for reunification, and the German population was never once asked whether we wanted this currency.
The conclusion should now be perfectly clear: Germany must immediately leave the Eurozone, and all the EU treaties, from Maastricht to Lisbon, must be annulled. We must immediately introduce a new D-mark, and thus regain sovereignty over our own currency and our own economy. That is the only way to prevent the whole situation from ending up in chaos. The move to the new D-mark must be linked to the immediate implementation of a two-tier banking system [a Glass-Steagall system], which protects credit to the real economy and simply writes off the trillions in toxic securities.
Dramatic Situation in Greece
The situation is highly dramatic. A look at Greece provides decisive proof that the austerity policies of the EU have failed. The Economics Minister of Greece, Michalis Chrysochoidis, warned today that Greece is facing a total social explosion. Today, an international trade fair is starting in Thessaloniki, and the police, fire brigades, coast guard, students, and the movement of the "Outraged" are all demonstrating there against the sellout of Greece. Meanwhile EU energy czar Günther Oettinger has made the absolutely absurd proposal to send some kind of "blue helmet" force of officials to Greece: international officials to mandate the privatization of state property there—to supervise the sale of Greek islands, for example; to provide oversight; and also to collect taxes.
In the 19th Century, such a policy led to armed uprisings against the colonial powers; and in Greece, people have very, very bad memories of that type of policy imposed by the Germans 70 years ago.
It's clear: The euro has produced exactly the opposite of peace in Europe. On Sept. 14, the so-called Troika—the IMF, the ECB, and the EU Commission—will travel to Greece to see if all their demands have been met. And they have already threatened that if that is not the case—and there is no way that it will be the case—they will withhold the next tranche of bailout funds; and by that point, Greece's departure from the Eurozone will be on the agenda anyway.
Just how dramatic the situation is, became clear at a press conference last Thursday, when Claude Trichet, the head of the ECB, delivered a seven-minute hysterical tirade (by his standards), when a journalist from the Börsenzeitung asked whether the ECB had become a "bad bank," and what he thought about the fact that more and more experts are saying that Germany has to return to the D-mark, in its own interests.
Jürgen Stark's resignation generated absolute terror: The DAX immediately tumbled by 4%, and it is perfectly clear why: Germany, of course, has become the last cash cow for this failed euro policy. Jörg Asmussen is now supposed to become the successor of Stark, which is like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop. It was Asmussen who contributed in 2004, during the Red-Green[1] government, to the promotion of deregulation up to its present scale, including by the creation of TSI (True Sale International).
This policy, which is the ECB's policy now, along with that of the U.S. Federal Reserve, will lead quickly to hyperinflation like that in Germany in 1923, only this time not just in one country, but throughout the trans-Atlantic region, and from there to the rest of the world. And every German family remembers that hyperinflation is the most brutal form of expropriation of ordinary people.
Malthusian Genocide
I would also like to add another aspect. In March of this year, Britain's Prince Philip, as chairman of the Royal Society of Arts, introduced a presentation by a certain Sir David Attenborough (http://populationmatters.org/attenboroughs-rsa-speech/), who issued such an incredible call for genocide as we have really not heard in Germany or in the world for 70 years. He claimed that the population explosion was the biggest problem of all, and that we must reduce the population.
This is the manure that fertilized the policies of Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Federal Government. Schellnhuber, with his call for a social contract to bring about a so-called "Great Transformation," supplied the basis for the energy policy shift of the Black-Yellow[2] coalition government. In this call, he demands the absolute de-carbonization of the global economy—i.e., not only should nuclear power be abolished, but Germany should stop using oil, gas, and coal. And if you reduce the world economy to a reliance on renewable energies only, that means genocide: a reduction in world population to a maximum of 1-2 billion people.
Prince Charles warned explicitly that we are facing the sixth major species extinction, allegedly because of CO2 emissions caused by anthropogenic climate change. Prince Charles apparently is responding to what we have been saying about the galactic causes of climate change.
Chancellor Merkel has taken Germany to the bottom of the abyss, with this combination of euro policy and energy policy. Now she is calling for changes to the EU treaties, so that Europe could finally become a transfer union.[3] But Germany's Basic Law, Article 146, states that a voter referendum is required for any change in the Constitution.
I hereby call for an immediate referendum on the return to the D-mark, on the question of sovereignty over our own economy, so the policies that ruling circles are using to impose dictatorship, behind the backs of the citizens, will now finally be stopped.
Help me and the BüSo, to save Germany from this murderous policy. The good news is, there is life after the euro! Help us to introduce the new D-mark and to end this monstrous casino economy, by putting in place a two-tier banking system immediately!
This statement was translated from German.
[1] Social Democratic-Green party—ed.
[2] Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union and Free Democratic Party, the currently ruling coalition.
[3] A system in which the debt of one or more EU members is transfered to others, whose taxpayers then have to repay it to the banks.
