PRESS RELEASE
Helga Zepp-LaRouche:
`Stop Economic Destruction in Germany!
Revive the Stability Law of 1967!'
Oct. 19, 2004 (EIRNS)—This release of the Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität (Civil Rights-Solidarity) Party in Germany was issued as a mass-circulation leaflet today, as 40,000 Germans demonstrate in Russelsheim and Bochum against massive layoffs announced by GM/Opel.
Far more than 17,000 people are about to lose their very livelihood, at Opel, Karstadt, Spar, Schlecker and many other firms that are not even mentioned in the media. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. If 4,000 Opel workers in Bochum are laid off, then 40,000 jobs in supplier companies are acutely threatened; the unemployment rate in Bochum, already at 18-20%, will double and assume dimensions like those in many places in Eastern Germany. Cities like Bochum or Russelsheim are threatened with becoming ghost towns, for, who is going to have money for the bakers, the butchers, and the barbers? What does all this talk about "socially acceptable solutions" mean?
The collapse of the globalization house of cards which is under way with full force, and which threatens to sweep away the entire German economy, is the inevitable and foreseeable result of the philosophy of the Maastricht Treaty, whose aim, from the very beginning, was to ruin the German economy. The Maastricht Treaty and its "Stability Pact" were the European part of globalization (that is, Anglo-American world empire), which was to subject Europe to the dictates of the banks and explicitly weaken the German economy through the elimination of the strong German mark. If Germany remains under the dictates of these agreements, then we will plunge further over the economic and social precipice.
For sure, much can be said about mistakes that were made. Let us remember that the Opel factory in Bochum was built at a time when the coal mines, in accordance with the post-indurtial utopia, were being shut down (today we have a massive crisis of coke supplies); Bochum is in a certain sense going through its second phase of deindustrialization. For sure, cheap production fanatics in management have discredited Opel and VW; and for sure, no German worker can work for two euros an hour payscale, as is normal at the moment in Poland. And for sure, the explosive outsourcing of production into the new Eastern EU countries and China, is dealing a blow to the solar plexus of the German economy. But all these and other mistakes are the results of the ideology of globalization and the dogma of the free market economy.
Now, precisely this globalization is coming to an end. The global financial system, whose agenda over the past 40 years has been set to the disadvantage of production and to the advantage of speculation, is now hopelessly and unsalvageably bankrupt. The leading financial institutions, banks and mega-speculators have exhausted all possibilities to make profits from the stock markets and bond markets. The various financial bubbles—the real estate bubble especially in the United States and Great Britain, the credit card debt bubble and the debt bubble in general, as well as the gigantic deficits in the U.S. budget and foreign trade, the gigantic derivatives and currency speculation worth $2 quadrillion ($2,000,000,000,000,000!) per year — all these bubbles have coagulated the risks on the markets; all that is needed is for one of these bubbles to burst, and the financial system will turn into a mine field. And since the stock markets and bond markets no longer yield any profits, the mega-speculators have thrown themselves into energy and raw materials markets, whereby they couldn't care less what the effect an oil price of $55 a barrel might have on the real economy and the social system.
We have now reached the point, where governments' continued loyalty to the banks, as occurs, for example with the Stability Pact, is taking its toll on the existence of human beings. Further acceptance of globalization and the Stability Pact represents a violation of natural law and the duty, anchored in the German Constitution, to serve the Common Good. Therefore, these agreements must be annulled. We can not allow institutions and industrial capacity, on which the existence of our nation depends, to be shut down and destroyed.
Finance Minister Eichel has officially determined that the overall economic balance has been severely disrupted. With this, there is the immediate possibility to activate the Stability Law of June 8, 1967. This law, which was voted up at the time by the Grand Coalition, in the face of the recession and about 420,000 (!) unemployed, gives the German government ample powers to promote the economic recovery and labor market — above all, with the help of targetted credit emission. If we, today, have 20 times as many unemployed, that is, according to the Econometric Institute in Halle, de facto 8.6 million — and this excludes the most recent wave of layoffs — then it is all the more urgent that this law be activated!
The Federal Government must do this, and then, after the example of the "New Deal" of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the model of the Lautenbach Plan and the WTB-Plan of the unionists Woytinsky, Tarnow und Baade of the 1930s, put low-interest state credits at the disposal, for instance, of the Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau (Germany's Bank for Reconstruction), not only in order to save the endangered workplaces at Opel and other affected factories, but also to create full productive employment through investments in the area of the General Welfare. To that end, at least 200 billion Euros of additional investments on infrastructure, basic research, and well-defined projects would be necessary.
For the specific problems of Opel and other automobile concerns, which are, of course, not independent of the world market, a partial conversion for the production of other vehicles could be considered; for example, in the public transportation sector (among other things, cable railways, magnetic rail cars) and battery-run automobiles, as well as farm machinery and tractors. If necessary, the affected firms must be transformed into cooperative enterprises, which are supported by savings banks and guaranteed by the government.
On a global level, the only hope for a way out of the present systemic crisis, lies in a victory of Senator Kerry in the U.S. elections and his implementation, with the energetic support of Lyndon LaRouche, of a policy in the tradition of FDR and the "New Deal," in the interest of those 80% of the population who are hit by the depression, and who have become increasingly poor over the past years. In Germany, the BueSo represents the same policy: a New Deal for Europe.
Even though the fateful decision regarding our future will be made in Washington, this does not mean that we can do nothing here.
The German government must be forced to activate the Stability Law, to save all affected companies, and to start a state investment program right away for the construction of the German economy and infrastructure. The starting points for this are the BueSo's Paris-Berlin-Vienna Productive Triangle program, the Delors Plan, the Tremonti Plan and the construction of the Eurasian Land-Bridge.
It is a matter of the existence and the future of Germany. Help us to save our nation and the future of our children and grandchildren!
