In reference to Lyndon LaRouche's "New Bretton Woods" policy proposal.

LaRouche:
'Economic System Is Near Death'

In a commemorative meeting to honor Martin LutherKing, Jr. sponsored in Washington, D.C., Jan. 16, 1996 by the EIR News Service, Democratic presidential primary candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. called on Americans, to lead the world out of a doomed and dying global financial system. His speech concentrated on three topics: 1) the insanity of the so-called budget crisis--what he called the "attempt to balance the budget by unbalanced minds"; 2) the nature of the crisis--"why the system is dying, what the system is sick of, and not just Newt Gingrich!"; and 3) the nature of an approach to the solution.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16, 1996 (EIRNS)--Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche delivered a stirring call to Americans yesterday, to lead the world out of a doomed and dying global financial system; he was addressing 250 supporters here at a Martin Luther King birthday commemoration sponsored by EIR News Service, of which he is founder and contributing editor. The event, which included two hours of dialogue with the audience, was videotaped and will form the basis of an upcoming half-hour nationwide television broadcast by the candidate.

Dr. King, LaRouche said, was "one of the few authentic leaders of the United States in the 20th century." He "presented conceptions to lift the civil rights movement to a higher conceptual level, to make the Constitution real for all people of the United States and the world." Under King's vision, the U.S. had "a mission not of victims but of leadership." This, LaRouche said, is what he and those who work with him today must again achieve.

"We've come to a time," LaRouche said, "in which the world civilization is about to disintegrate," and is very near its death. "Nothing can prevent [its death] or prolong its life. The only question is: Will nations go to disaster with it?" In order to prevent that, LaRouche said, humanity requires, first, a clear conception of what the problem is, and second, a clear conception of the solution.

The candidate presented, conceptually, "as Martin would have wished," three crucial topics, to allow the audience to grasp the problem and the solution: 1) the insanity of the so-called budget crisis--what he called the "attempt to balance the budget by unbalanced minds"; 2) the nature of the crisis--"why the system is dying, what the system is sick of, and not just Newt Gingrich!"; and 3) the nature of an approach to the solution.

The ensuing presentation was crafted around a series of graphs, projected overhead, which this news service has recently published (see the Jan. 1 issue of Executive Intelligence Review). The graphs document the real nature of the terminal economic and financial crisis confronting the U.S. and the world, and obliterate the idea, recently popularized by presidential candidate Phil Gramm, that the nation should "balance the federal budget the way you balance your family budget."

But, LaRouche noted, because what he has to say is "heavy," those who oppose him use his fraudulent 1988-89 conviction and subsequent imprisonment as a pretext to dismiss his ideas. Therefore, he introduced the economic discussion with a passionate account of the events which led up to his and his associates' frame-up conviction and imprisonment, and an urgent call to clean out the corrupt elements surrounding Henry Kissinger, George Bush, and the Department of Justice, who perpetrated the injustice.

In the discussion period, he took up the theme again, stating that, because he is a "potential folk hero," his exoneration "could blow up the country. It would mean an end of Henry Kissinger's influence." Kissinger and others tried to put him and his association out of business, LaRouche said, but "We're not out of business; we're here."

Cuts Increase the Deficit

Every attempt to cut the federal budget since the Carter administration, because it has decimated the tax revenue base, has led to increasing deficits, LaRouche showed, in the dramatic first series of graphs. The federal deficit, which had been negligible before Carter, began to zoom upward with the implementation of Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker's high-interest-rate regime, as businesses couldn't afford to stay open. The 1981 Kemp-Roth budget-balancing measure doubled the deficit, and the 1985 Gramm-Rudman bill, co-sponsored by Presidential candidate Phil Gramm, doubled it again. It continued to grow under the "President in charge of vice," George Bush, and has only begun to decline under Clinton, LaRouche showed. "Now they want to get rid of Clinton to unbalance the budget!"

LaRouche explained, using the next series of graphs, that the purpose of government is to foster an increase in the wealth of the population, and that government expenditures, particularly in technology-dense areas like defense and aerospace, increase revenue far above their cost. But the Republican "Red Guards" in Congress, he said, are determined to shut down such spending in order to deliver tax-cut benefits to "idle parasites" and speculators.

The candidate debunked the myth that the national debt is caused by the federal deficit. In fact, he explained, the reverse is true: The deficit is caused by the increase in debt. In the next series of graphs, he demonstrated how, since 1966, the economy has moved out of the production of tangible goods into the realm of "absolute speculation," with the result that we are now in a "hyperbolic situation" which can only lead to collapse.

LaRouche completed his presentation with a sweeping view of the last 550 years of history, showing how the nation-state founded in France by Louis XI brought society out of barbarism. "Prior to this, every culture was a moral failure," LaRouche said, with 95% of the population subject to slavery, serfdom or worse. Under Louis XI, an intelligentsia was created--what he called "the Martin Luther Kings of the population"--which became "the force on which Louis XI relied to subordinate the aristocracy. Those representatives of the people, in the name of the people, then constituted a nation." That new nation-state, and the positive role of the government, fostered the growth of education, as a result of which the population began to grow exponentially. And "the world as a whole benefited from European civilization."

This is the tradition that we in the U.S. represent, LaRouche said, concluding with a broad challenge to the audience. After France was destroyed, "It fell to the United States, under the Constitution, and particularly the Preamble, which is the noblest act of law in history, to be the bearers of hope for the planet.... But we have betrayed our great calling as a nation and we have brought ourselves into the condition, under British influence, where we are about to be destroyed." Now, he said, we must abandon the errors we have made and realize that our destiny is to make the blessings of the Constitution available to every part of this planet.

"I hope I have done, in my way, what Martin Luther King would have done in his," said LaRouche, concluding his address.