Italy Moving on LaRouche's NBW?
Candidate on National TV

by Paul Gallagher

Twenty-eight Italian Senators on May 13 moved a powerful resolution, even stronger than one the Chamber of Deputies has already passed, demanding the Italian government convene the "New Bretton Woods" monetary conference Lyndon LaRouche has campaigned for since 1997. The resolution (see Documentation) declares the International Monetary Fund (IMF) system bankrupt, and seeks a new global agreement among nations to pour credit into large-scale modern economic infrastructure and job creation to fight the worldwide depression. As the Senate move was made, Italian national TV broadcast an interview with LaRouche, strategically motivating a New Bretton Woods. Signs of worsening depression collapse were everywhere, pointing to an early disintegration of the bankrupt monetary system:

• All the formerly-industrial powers' economies contracted from January to March, despite U.S. statistical fakery; all have lost production and employment, month after month, since last November;
  
  
• The G-7 countries, "led" by the United States, are suffering sickening plunges in government revenue. The U.S. Federal government is experiencing a staggering 20-25% fall in personal and corporate tax revenues over the past two years, will run a $500 billion one-year deficit, and is quickly raising its Federal debt ceiling by nearly $1 trillion;
  
  
• The U.S. dollar's sudden 20%-plus slide is becoming a meltdown, striking down America as "the global importer" and battering economies all over the world;
  
  
• Japan on May 19 had to precipitously bail out its fifth-largest bank with $17 billion, and Bank of Japan Governor Toshihiko Fukui warned that "without appropriate policy measures, a financial crisis could possibly happen." The IMF held a secret finance ministers' meeting May 17 on global "banking system fragility";
  
  
• The leading Russian economic news agency RBC reported, also on May 19, that the Russian Central Bank "fears another default" like the GKO government bond default that shocked world markets in 1998, but this time due to exploding international debt of Russian companies.

Focus on Italian Action in Collapse

Senator Oskar Peterlini's May 13 initiative once again put Italy in the forefront of the fight against world economic disaster, just as it was last September, when the Italian Chamber of Deputies, on a bipartisan vote, passed a similar resolution for a New Bretton Woods. That passage occurred after a floor debate in which LaRouche's leadership in forging an alternative to global economic collapse was explicitly cited.

The Chamber unanimously approved a modified version of the motion, which called on the Italian government to work for a new international financial architecture in order to avoid the disastrous effects of the speculative bubble and major financial crises. Compared to the original, the approved text did not include direct condemnation of the policies of the International Monetary Fund.

The new Senate motion—written in collaboration with Paolo Raimondi, president of the International Civil Rights Movement Solidarity, the LaRouche movement in Italy—singles out the policies of the IMF and Alan Greenspan's U.S. Federal Reserve as responsible for prolonging and worsening the global economic and financial crisis.

In April, Senators Peterlini and Patrizia Toia organized a meeting at the Senate with LaRouche, in which the U.S. Presidential pre-candidate told a group of Senators and Deputies that the best way to combat the neo-imperial policies coming from the Bush Administration, is to work for a change in economic policy in Europe, in favor of the Eurasian Land-Bridge perspective. LaRouche said that such a shift, which would be premised on the New Bretton Woods reorganization called for in the Senate motion, would represent a strategic shift capable of reversing the current global economic breakdown crisis. Peterlini then announced that he intended to introduce a new motion, as there had been a grave worsening in the world situation. In addition, the Senate, unlike the Chamber of Deputies, had not until now held a discussion and vote on the initiative.

The motion signals the Italian government, and other major governments of the world, that Italian institutions are not willing to sit idly by while the economic crisis continues to worsen. The policies capable of reversing the situation are on the table, and as the motion says, they must be at the center of the debate. At present, the Italian government has not publicly moved in this direction, although over the past year there has been an increasingly serious movement to dump the budget-cutting criteria of the European Union's Maastricht Treaty agreements, and re-establish mechanisms for long-term credit creation in order to finance major infrastructure projects.

The degree to which there is a national focus on what to do about the hopelessly bankrupt IMF system, and on LaRouche's leadership, was underscored on the morning of May 21, when Italy's first TV station, Raiuno, aired a 45-minute documentary entitled "Anatomy of a Collapse," which featured the economic analysis and reconstruction programs of LaRouche, as well as a critique of the Bush Administration war policy. Raiuno's coverage was based on an interview done in January 2003 with LaRouche, whom they identified as a world-renowned economist; a man on whom many try to stick colorful labels, but who is the author of the sharpest analysis so far, of the financial collapse.

LaRouche on TV Calls Eurasia the Center

The Italian television coverage of LaRouche's role as a leading economist, represents a breakthrough in international press coverage of his work. The enormous credibility which LaRouche has internationally, and in the United States, has remained primarily behind the scenes, due to pressure from his enemies. This situation now seems poised to change.

In the 45-minute TV documentary, which is expected to be rebroadcast within a few weeks, LaRouche was shown speaking at length on the questions of Sept. 11, Cheney and Rumsfeld, the origins of the financial-economic crisis, and the solution. Asked for another of his "famous economic forecasts," LaRouche answered: "There are two possibilities, and we must choose. There is nothing pre-determined; it is a choice. In Asia, Eurasia, there is a quite interesting development: China, Russia, Southeast Asia, India, Korea, and Japan are oriented towards a convergence, on a greater expansion represented by what China has done with the Three Gorges Dam or with the maglev connection between the Shanghai Airport and the city of Shanghai, and similar projects, the Mekong development projects, etc.... This is the largest market in the world; Europe is now bankrupt. To escape a hopeless bankruptcy of the euro system, countries such as France, Germany, and Italy need larger markets. In the long term, these larger markets can be found in India, China, Southeast Asia, etc., which are already important markets for Europe. Russia will play a role, as economic partner of Western Europe, through the reorganization of the Russian debt, which can be transformed into credit for industry and joint ventures between Russia and Europe.

"Given these circumstances, the world can come out of the depression, on the condition, however, that there is the capacity to create a new monetary system, able to manage the problems, through long-term, 25- to 50-year investments, through technology-sharing operations rather than technology export.

"If the United States," LaRouche said, "decides to reach an agreement with Europe and Asia, collaborating with Asia and Europe, freeing Africa from genocide, reconstructing Central and South America and similar things ... we will be able to come out of the impasse, and within one generation we could count on one of the most solid economies the world has ever seen. If we do not do that, if we try to collect debts, like the Lombard bankers did in the 14th Century, then we will sink in a new dark age. That is the situation."