PRESS RELEASE
German President Renews Call for Bretton Woods II
Nov. 24, 2008 (EIRNS)—This release was issued today by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC).
The most important, and most useful, section of the speech that German President Horst Köhler gave to the European Finance Week congress of international bankers in Frankfurt this past Friday, Nov. 21, is being censored by most of the media here, which instead focus on his lambasting of bankers' and fund managers' irresponsibility. The respective, censored section of the Koehler remarks, who unlike in earlier interviews and speeches omitted reference to Keynes, reads like this:
In 1944, the conference of Bretton Woods laid the foundation for a market-economic world economic order based on division of labor after the Second World War. Not least this decision brought (back) confidence, and provided wealth and progress to the industrial nations. It provided Germany with the urgently-required flow of capital from abroad, enabling us to build up an export economy that is outstandingly successful to this day. Bretton Woods was, therefore, a decisive orientation also for the success of the Social Market Economy (model) in Germany. I stress it once again: the dimension of the crisis today calls for a Bretton Woods II, a gathering of the best who with expertise morality and political commitment are systematically review the crisis.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who has led the Schiller Institute's campaign for a New Bretton Woods for over 20 years, immediately commented favorably on the Köhler speech on Nov. 24: "Now, this is very important, because, you know, he is linking the 'economic miracle,' the reconstruction of Germany after the Second World War, with the Bretton Woods system. And if you please remember, this is an argument which in the past, only we made. We made this statement, also, always that the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau financing of the reconstruction of Germany was modeled on FDR and the Reconstruction Finance Corp., the FDR approach. So, this is very important, because if you compare our campaigning for that in a complete vacuum, and here you have it with the President of Germany."
