EIR LEAD EDITORIAL THURSDAY APRIL 20, 2023
An Outbreak of Public Sanity
April 19, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—Last month, China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin held a summit in Moscow, which included charting their collaboration over the next eight years on economic projects. Xi’s “Belt and Road” approach over the last ten years has shown country after country that nations can mutually benefit, if they simply choose projects that, in real physical economy terms, work. And since one nation doesn’t have to push down its neighbor in order to get ahead, room is created for defining pathways in which one nation is important, even vital, to its neighbor. China’s “shocking” diplomatic successes with the rapprochement of Saudi Arabia and Iran—with the radiating effects, notably in Syria and Yemen—turn out to be a normal byproduct of sane economics. It forces to the surface the realization that insane economics were at the root of the so-called intractable conflicts we’re accustomed to.
Last week, Russia’s strategic physical economist Sergey Glazyev addressed the Moscow Economic Forum, in a timely panel discussion, focused upon the secret of China’s economic success, of healthy credit generation, of a successful war on poverty—with the aim of Russia importing that method, and rooting out its own “central bank” insanity.
This week, over 150 Russian and Chinese entrepreneurs representing at least 130 different institutions and corporations met in Moscow at the “2023 Sino-Russian Economic, Trade and Investment Cooperation Forum,” where they not only heard from Glazyev, from the President of China’s Overseas Development Association, from the Economic Counselor of the Chinese Embassy in Russia and others on the matter of carrying out the Putin-Xi economic development areas, but they also reportedly conducted “business-to-industry matchmaking on the spot,” with a lot of one-on-one negotiations, and a “warm atmosphere.”
Meanwhile, in Washington, today Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) introduced her “Return to Prudent Banking Act,” based upon FDR’s famously successful Glass-Steagall Act, and its prohibition against the transaction of banking activities by securities firms, reserving government’s role for the protection and encouragement of savings, eliminating the addiction to bailing out speculators. The second paragraph of Kaptur’s announcement reads: “The legislation has been endorsed by the Schiller Institute and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).” Kaptur press release continues: “ ‘The 2008 financial crash nearly took down our entire economy and led to the great recession wiping out the income and savings for many Americans. The recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in California and Signature Bank in New York echoes the 2008 collapse with speculators squeezing through every regulatory keyhole to find an avenue to game the system,’ said Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur. ‘In 2023, here we are again, watching bank runs, failures, and massive buyouts. Wall Street has proven that it cannot control itself, and it is only a matter of time before it steers America into the next financial crisis. It cannot be any clearer that the time for systemic reform is now....’ ” It is so obvious, but since when does the obvious triumph in Washington, D.C.?
Also today, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, officially opened his campaign for the U.S. Presidency, announcing that, while the U.S. has been destroying bridges, roads, ports and hospitals, China has been building the very same around the world, winning the just regard and trust from country after country. Instead of spending trillions on wars, they chose to spend on things that pay back, that work. He added that his father and his uncle wanted to do what China has been doing. Kennedy certainly has his populist shortcuts and scientific shortcomings, but there’s a hint of an old-fashioned American approach, where we get ahead by actually looking to help other nations.
Yesterday, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson actually told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing that the U.S. and Russia had “a very professional, competent relationship” in their work in space, that the collaboration on the 1975 Soyuz-Apollo flight “set the tone for the civilian space program between otherwise two enemies, two political and geopolitical enemies.” It continued when “we worked and built together the International Space Station.... If we can continue peacefully working together in space, maybe that’s a template for the future.” That really happened.
And today, for the April 12 Cosmonautics Day, in celebration of the anniversary of mankind’s first manned space flight, accomplished on April 12, 1961 by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the Schiller Institute’s founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche conveyed a greeting to an event at the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Peru:
“What a joyful and unique memory to think of that man, Yuri Gagarin, who went for the first time into space, 62 years ago. Especially in times, when the weight of dangers and threats to the very existence of mankind, be it through the danger of war, be it through the burden of poverty or lack of development, seems to press us down and make our fate inescapable, the thought of Yuri Gagarin is awesome.”
Gagarin opened
“a new epoch in the history of mankind, establishing us not as a species of Earthlings, but as a spacefaring species, of a kind which is capable of potentially infinite perfection and progress, provided we are truthful to the good and the laws of the physical universe. Let us draw strength from that inspiring thought to think into the future, to think how we will work together as one humanity establishing a village on the moon, a city on Mars, and by breaking through the next barriers by using thermonuclear fusion as propulsion, making possible interstellar space flight. Then we will have left behind us the danger of extinction through nuclear war and the small-mindedness of geopolitical conflict. There is plenty of reason to be extremely optimistic about the new epoch of which we can see the morning rays....”
It is no time to allow the corrosive cynicism of a few decades of decadence to stand in the way. Rather, it is time for an outbreak of public sanity.
