LAROUCHE WARNED YOU:
Detroit Could Have Been Saved in 2005
by Jeffrey Steinberg
July 24—The current genocidal assault on what remains of the population of the once-great industrial city of Detroit was fully forecast by Lyndon LaRouche back in April 2005, at the moment that the Bush Administration and the likes of Felix Rohatyn were tearing down the last remnants of the American machine-tool-design sector. LaRouche not only spelled out the intended genocide against Detroit; he presented an in-depth alternative to the plans of the Bush Administration and Wall Street fascists to destroy the last remnants of the machine-tool-design capacity of the United States, and he demanded emergency action from the U.S. Congress.
The failure of the House and Senate to implement LaRouche's Economic Recovery Act of 2005, along with the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, were conscious acts of complicity with genocide, which the Obama Administration has continued with a vengeance, to this day.
Back in 2005, while the Bush Administration, abetted by Rohatyn and other Wall Street looters, was dismantling the last remnants of the American auto-manufacturing sector, LaRouche issued a warning that should resonate in the ears of every Member of Congress today:
"If we allow the U.S. auto-manufacturing industry to be destroyed, the U.S.A. becomes a virtual 'Third World' nation overnight. The nation's machine-tool-design capability, most of which is tied up in the U.S. auto-manufacturing firms, is lost.
"The loss of employment of that machine-tool-design segment of that part of the labor-force, means many times that number of employees out of jobs, with no other place to go.
"The loss of auto plants means an economic disaster, approaching ghost-town proportions, for what are already highly vulnerable entire towns, counties, and cities, even states of the Union, throughout many parts of the country. This could set off a chain-reaction collapse much, much worse than President Herbert Hoover's foolish reaction to the 1929 crash."
Restoring Machine-Tool Capacity
LaRouche then identified the solution, which was then elaborated in the form of legislation ready for emergency action by Congess.
"Cutting back on automobile manufacturers' plants and payrolls is not a sane alternative," he warned. "The answer is to diversify the product line. The key to any sane approach is to accept the reduction in the number of automobiles produced by U.S. automakers, but to replace that work immediately with a switch to other categories of technologically very high-grade products, which the auto industry's machine-tool capacity is uniquely qualified to design and produce. Members of the U.S. Congress are already focusing attention on urgently needed mass-transit systems, power-generation and distribution systems, and other urgent needs of the nation. These would not be make-work projects, but are the new production needed to prevent the United States from continuing to collapse physically into Third-World conditions, throughout most of the nation.
"Action, by the U.S. Federal government and others, is urgently needed to prevent an across-the-board collapse of not only the U.S. auto industry, but the counties, towns, cities, and states, and their people, which would be pulled under by failing to act now with the reforms needed to save the industry by switching to a new combination of high technology machine-tool-design products."
The repeal of Glass-Steagall, along with the failure to fight to save Detroit's, and the entire region's, machine-tool sector, are the two primary reasons that Detroit is now facing total destruction. The future of the entire nation now comes down to one simple question: Will enough members of Congress show the courage and honesty to reverse their disastrous capitulation to Wall Street, by immediately passing the legislation, which is now before both the House and Senate, to reinstate Glass-Steagall?
This time, they will have to brave the opposition of Bush's successor, Obama, who has followed the same Wall Street policy of slashing the productive sector, and opposing Glass-Steagall.
With Glass-Steagall restored, this Summer, Congress can see to it that a flood of long-term, low-interest credit is made available to carry out the needed industrial and infrastructural build-up proposed by LaRouche in 2005. Sufficient numbers of the skilled workers and vacant factory facilities are still available, even at this late date, to launch an historic recovery. Detroit can once again become the Arsenal of Democracy—not for the purpose of defeating fascism on the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific, but to defeat the fascism of Wall Street, by wiping out the gambling debts and restoring a functioning commercial banking sector to facilitate urgently needed great projects, such as the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA).
