EDITORIAL

London and Wall Street
Launch ‘Financial ATACMS’
Against the BRICS

by Dennis Small

[Print version of this editorial]

Nov. 30—The upcoming Dec. 7-8 Schiller Institute conference, “In the Spirit of Schiller and Beethoven: All Men Become Brethren!” will serve as a needed celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Schiller Institute, founded in 1984 by Helga Zepp-LaRouche. From its inception, the Schiller Institute’s stated central mission has been to return the United States to a foreign policy worthy of its Founding Fathers, dedicated to the General Welfare of all nations. This is necessary to prevent the planetary collapse into fascist economics and global warfare that Lyndon LaRouche forecast would occur without such a radical paradigm-shift.

Had that policy of the LaRouches been followed, we would not be where we are today: At the brink of a thermonuclear war, which could extinguish the human species altogether, and at the same time, careening towards an international financial and economic meltdown that equally endangers all mankind. But along with the danger, there is now a unique opportunity to make that policy of the LaRouches a reality.

The departing U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration, throughout his term a servile Leporello to the Wall Street and City of London interests that put him in power, has been tasked with worsening every possible global hot spot to try to make sure the incoming U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s administration doesn’t break out of the Establishment’s box. Rounds of ATACMS have been launched into Russian territory, to provoke them in the direction of nuclear escalation; discussions of “whether or not” to launch preemptive strikes to decapitate Russia’s nuclear capability are being openly flaunted by London think tanks (such as Chatham House) and subservient American and European admirals (Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan, U.S. Strategic Command Director of Plans and Policy and Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, NATO’s Military Committee Chief). Syria is once again being subjected to an internationally sponsored invasion, which has succeeded thus far in penetrating into its second city, Aleppo. And now all-out financial warfare is being launched against leading nations of BRICS, which represent 4.7 billion people, the vast majority of mankind.

The method being used is the one that succeeded in staging a de facto coup during the October 2023 Argentine elections, in order to assure the victory of the sanity-challenged Argentine President Javier Milei, who pulled Argentina out of the BRICS to join the NATO “club”: financial warfare to cause capital flight and weaken the local currency; blackmailing the government into drastically raising interest rates to try to stop the capital flight and defend their currency; and using those high interest rates combined with imposed sharp cutbacks in government spending to wreck the national economy, creating the conditions to overthrow the targeted government—whether by a “color revolution” or manipulated elections.

BRICS member Russia is now being hit with such financial warfare, including additional sanctions against all its banks and international pressure to raise interest rates, even above the current level of 21%. BRICS member India is under assault by a U.S. Department of Justice operation to bankrupt the country’s leading businessman, Gautam Adani, who is a close ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his economic development strategy. And now BRICS member Brazil has been instructed by “the markets” that it has to further raise interest rates (from 11.25% to 12.25% and higher), as well as cut back government spending, to stay in the good graces of Wall Street and the City of London.

To extend the pressure across the board, there is now reportedly a “broad sell-off” of the bonds of Global South countries, according to Bloomberg.

U.S. President-elect Trump is so far only making matters worse. After naming Wall Street darling Scott Bessent as his proposed U.S. Treasury Secretary, Trump announced today on his Truth Social account that any BRICS or other country that “moves away from the dollar” or considers creating a new BRICS currency, “will face 100% tariffs” from the U.S. Never mind the fact that it is the U.S. itself, under Wall Street policies, that has driven countries away from the dollar by arbitrarily seizing their assets and imposing illegal sanctions on them—all to keep the dollar-denominated $2 quadrillion speculative bubble aloft.

Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche responded that if this is not just bluster, and Trump really does impose 100% tariffs, that is as good as announcing the end of the dollar financial system: It will unleash major inflation, and collapse the value of the dollar internationally. And that, she stated, goes along with the idea of Global NATO and World War III.

The way out of this “war of each against all” dead-end is actually readily at hand, and will be the subject of two days of intense deliberation among leading figures from the nations of the North and the South, the East and the West, who will gather at the Schiller Institute online conference Dec. 7 and 8.