PRESS RELEASE
Hankel Endorses LaRouche Call
For New Pecora Commission
Jan. 16, 2009 (EIRNS)—In an exclusive interview (with Helga Zepp-LaRouche as the interviewer) for the coming issue of the Neue Solidarität weekly, Prof. Wilhelm Hankel, a signer of the first LaRouche call for a New Bretton Woods nine years ago, fully endorses the call for a new Pecora Commission, insisting that under no circumstances should any persons that have been responsible for the financial-monetary mess, be seated on that commission, however,
In quite some detail, Hankel denounces the idea of a "bad bank" as a bailout of the criminals, proposing instead that the speculators themselves clean up the mess by taking the foul papers out of the banks' books, put it into a special fund, handled by the private banking sector, and depreciate it over a period of 20 years. Only that approach would protect the real economy from the fictitious debt. Hankel adds that arrests of certain criminal bankers or investors, or at least legal cases to extract compensation payments for the damage caused by those criminals, should not be ruled out.
Hankel urges that real economic investments, which have been blocked in the past era of neo-liberalist monetarism, be resumed as a priority policy in the education and transprt sectors, especially into transeuropean transport projects, and there, he particularly endorses the LaRouche proposal for the realization of the Siberian transport grid, which is crucial for the development of the Eurasian continent.
Hankel is a former chief economist of the German Reconstruction Bank (Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau), as well as a former head of the capital and loans department of the German Finance Ministry.
