PRESS RELEASE
LaRouche Forecast and
Land-Bridge Proposals
Presented at Kremlin Seminar
On May 15, 2001, LaRouche representative Dr. Jonathan Tennenbaum addressed an exclusive seminar on the global financial crisis, held in the Diplomatic Chamber of the Kremlin Palace in Moscow, and attended by approximately 150 representatives of the Russian government, business and financial circles, and press. The privately organized seminar also heard presentations by experts from a number of leading Russian think-tanks, on financial and economic developments in the United States and globally.
In his 30-minute address, delivered in Russian, Tennenbaum presented essential concepts from the May 4-6 international conference of the Schiller Institute in Bad Schwalbach, Germany. He focussed on Lyndon LaRouche's analysis of the global strategic situation, his characterization of the Bush Administration and his conception of the necessary alternative to a threatened "New Dark Age," including the special role and mission of Russia. Tennenbaum also went into the strategic significance of the political fight shaping up inside the U.S., around the issue of the "common good," as exemplified around the D.C. General and California energy crisis fights. After his speech, a number of participants came up to receive copies of LaRouche's Bad Schwalbach keynote address.
The perspective of Eurasian corridor-centered development was taken up by several of the Russian speakers. A representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Diplomatic Academy, stressed the crucial importance of a strategic partnership between Russia and Germany, and proposed that a special economic development commission be set up within the Shanghai Five group, with European countries invited to participate. The future role of the euro currency, and potentially even of a gold-based Chinese yuan, as alternative reserve currencies in the context of a threatened crash of the dollar, was discussed by several Russian speakers, including an expert from the Central Mathematic Economics Institute, where Academician Dmitri Lvov is based. It was indicated that Russian investors had already begun a quiet "diversification" out of the dollar, into other currencies as well as "hard" physical assets. (A large part of the Russia's population's savings are currently held in dollars.)
In a follow-on dicussion, Tennenbaum emphasized that mere currency arrangements could provide no answer to the crisis, and no security from the danger of a chaotic disintegration of the entire world economy. Rather, any solution must start from the principle of the common good and a policy for large-scale physical-economic development. The emergence of a Eurasian development-corridor-centered alternative to the collapse of the global financial system, could provide the context for sane forces in the U.S. to come to the fore, bringing the U.S. into partnership with such a development perspective.
The Malaysian Ambassador to Russia also addressed the seminar, speaking of his country's experience in adopting capital controls and reasserting national economic sovereignty against the dictates of the IMF. He presented a new, Russian translation of a book by Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad on the same subject.
A new atmosphere of growing self-confidence in Russia, was clearly evidenced by discussions in and around the Kremlin seminar—a sense that Russia has passed the most dangerous period of its ten-year internal crisis, and could survive a global financial collapse much better than most countries, including the U.S. It was generally acknowledged, that President Vladimir Putin has succeeded in consolidating step-by-step his control over the government apparatus, while constraining the influence of the so-called "Russian oligarchs" to a significant extent. At the same time, the Eurasian thrust of Russia's foreign policy, as underlined by the recent rail transport initiatives, is converging on the requirements of a "winning strategy" for world survival, set forth by LaRouche at the Bad Schwalbach conference. Thus, the LaRouche presence at the Kremlin seminar was not in itself a qualitative breakthrough, but rather a lawful product of LaRouche's rapidly growing authority in leading circles of Russia and other nations.
Meanwhile, a Russian translation of Tennenbaum's address at a previous financial conference in Moscow last March, entitled "Global Financial Crisis: What Is To Be Done?" is circulating on two Russian Internet sites, as well as the Russian version of LaRouche's article on "Trade Without Currency." Tennenbaum's text was also published in the latest issue of the Russian magazine Millennium.
