PRESS RELEASE
Can the Auto/Machine-Tool Industry Still Be Revived? Admit `LaRouche Was Right' with His 2005 Plan
Sept. 5, 2008 (EIRNS)—This release was issued on Sept. 3 by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee.
The Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC) is relaunching its mobilization to "retool" and save the U.S. auto/machine-tool industry, now that Congress and both Presidential candidates are finally acknowledging—three and a half years late—that this can and must be done.
LaRouche declared on Aug. 30 that LPAC will reactivate all the networks that it mobilized throughout 2005-2007, for a real retooling policy for the auto plants, since the "retooling" put forward now by the Democratic Party platform and the Michigan Congressional delegation is far too late and much, much too "mini."
It is three and one half years since economist and statesman LaRouche, in May 2005, first proposed what became his Economic Recovery Act of 2006 to retool and save the U.S. auto/ machine-tool industry. LaRouche proposed to the auto managements, the United Auto Workers, and Congress to "give auto a new mission" (accepting steadily declining auto sales), by a Federal corporation to retool auto on the model of the World War II "Arsenal of Democracy." This time, the mission would be rebuilding America's neglected and collapsed economic infrastructure. Without such action, LaRouche had forecast in February 2005, what were then called "the Big Three" would soon be crushed by the collapsing global debt bubble. Both his forecast, and his proposed solution, have been proven right.
LaRouche's Economic Recovery Act, backed in a mobilization by local auto union leaders and activists, was blocked, by the hold on the Democratic Party leadership of fascist banker Felix Rohatyn, and British financier agents George Soros and Al Gore. Blocked, with the help of some of the same auto executives now asking for $50 billion in Federal "retooling" credits to save their companies.
Since then, for lack of such Congressional action, 255,000 more jobs in the auto and auto parts and systems industry have been eliminated; 50 plants have been shut down, more targetted for closure, and others cut down to skeleton levels of operation.
With the whole U.S. physical economy now collapsing, Members of Congress, at the August Democratic Convention, finally began debating action to save the Detroit 3 auto companies by "retooling the auto plants" with tens of billions of dollars of Federal loans or loan guarantees.
The belated "mini"-version of LaRouche's policy won't work. Retooling to build European-style "mini" cars in U.S. auto plants won't stop the overall plunge in auto sales across the United States, Europe, Japan, Korea, and even China; it won't bring back lost machine-tool capacity. Al Gore-y schemes to retool auto plants to build wind turbines, to power electric cars, are bad jokes at the expense of auto workers and the U.S. economy.
Bailing out GM, Ford, and Cerberus/Chrysler is not a valid U.S. policy objective. LaRouche does not propose to fund these incompetent, SUV-addled corporate managements—but to use a Federal corporation, in combination with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to retool, reopen, and expand closed, underutilized, threatened plants, and build new infrastructure for new productivity and employment in the entire economy.
LPAC is rushing out a DVD, "What Happened to the United States' Auto Sector?" in a new policy drive for creation of a Federal corporation to finance large-scale retooling of auto plants, to produce the elements of a new economic infrastructure of rail transport, power, water management, sanitation, navigation, and more. This is the only chance, at this very late date, that 500,000 skilled, now-former auto workers, and 50 million square feet of machine-tool industrial capacity, may still be put back into productive, well-paid work to revive the collapsing physical economy of the United States.
