‘People First!’

March 25 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump’s National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow has usefully revealed in his remarks at the March 24 White House Coronavirus Task Force Press Briefing, what so many members of Congress and media editors have sought to conceal: That in the immense coronavirus relief legislation now going through Congress, Wall Street gets $4 trillion, while the rest of America’s households, businesses, hospitals, seniors, airlines, oil drillers, states and cities, and so on, get a total of $2 trillion. That’s what the cancer of the floating-exchange-rate, casino money system of the City of London and Wall Street does to us as it goes into utter collapse.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has joined Kudlow in publicly estimating that the Fed will have to make another $4 trillion available to the financial business, with its megabanks and its vast multitude of small and large speculative funds and vehicles, on top of the vast funds already poured in since 2008 via quantitative easing and other ruses. This is to try to maintain the value of many hundreds of trillions in speculative debt assets and derivatives, which should be frozen for the duration of the crisis instead, and put through bankruptcy reorganization.

Under the proposed new bailout, the Federal Reserve will put out this $4 trillion, and probably more; but the Treasury, and therefore ultimately the taxpayers, will back it. The first installment will be $400-500 billion allocated by the Treasury to the Federal Reserve in what is called the Treasury Exchange Stabilization Fund. This open line of payments to the Fed may be tucked into the $2 trillion legislation now being passed; but even if it isn’t, the Treasury will have to borrow it, make it available to the Fed, and ultimately charge it to the taxpayers. Then, since the Fed—as a bank—will suffer big losses buying and guaranteeing all these failing securities, more Treasury payments will be necessary.

The Treasury will be making the biggest bailout in history. It will dwarf the coronavirus relief for Americans.

Over the last three weeks, the Fed has already issued some $3.2 trillion in quantitative easing and other forms of funny money. Whether the plan is to now issue another $4 trillion on top of that, or if part of the $3.2 is to be construed as part of the $4 trillion “big bazooka,” is an open question—but ultimately a moot one. Whether it’s $4 trillion, or $7.2 trillion, or twice that amount that the bankrupt financial system demands in the form of hyperinflationary bailouts, it will be like a drop of water on a sizzling frying pan. It will do nothing to stop the collapse of the $1.8 quadrillion derivatives bubble that is underway.

Only bankruptcy reorganization through a return to Glass-Steagall can begin to do that. And only the other three of Lyndon LaRouche’s Four Laws can get a new science-driven credit system established, with international cooperation, to pull the world back from the brink.

Nearly 22 years ago, on October 4, 1998, Lyndon LaRouche published an article titled “People First!” whose opening sentences read as if they had been written today for the current crisis the U.S. and the world face.

“Very soon, the doomed, present international financial system will disintegrate. It can not be managed, or repaired; its doom is certain, and soon. We are already in the final phase of its destruction. This destruction will occur either in a rational way, through merciful, pre-emptive actions by individual governments, or in the most tragic way, spontaneously, and chaotically. Either way, the present financial system is doomed to disappear, very soon.

“Under these circumstances, the continued existence of the U.S.A., as of other nations, depends absolutely upon the alacrity with which the government responds with certain required, immediate measures of emergency action.

“If the measures specified here are taken, this nation will assuredly survive the crisis, and that most successfully. If the political will to adopt and implement such emergency measures, immediately, is lacking, the nation will be torn apart by the chaos caused by its stubborn refusal to change the present system. If the present posture of clinging to the self-doomed dogmas of ‘free trade’ and ‘globalization’ is not overturned, chaos is already inevitable; in that case, this nation will not survive in a recognizable form.

“The following are exemplary required measures….

“1.0 General emergency policy

“When that disintegration of the world’s present financial system occurs, the U.S. and other governments, if they are sane, will each consider themselves obliged to take certain, instant, autonomously sovereign, and drastic emergency actions. The immediate purpose of these actions, is to maintain the social stability and general welfare of the nation and its entire population. The rule governing these actions, is: ‘People first! All the people!’ ”

 

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