Larouche Online Almanac

Published: Monday, August 12, 2002
Today is:

Volume 1, No.23


THE INCREDIBLE AND THE ELECTABLE

A tectonic change in the world's political landscape is now under way. In this crisis, the reality of the economic collapse hitting full force, along with the impact of the hard-hitting campaign to expose and discredit the dirty duo of Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain, initiated by, what is now being seen more and more, as the electable Lyndon LaRouche, is producing major political shifts in the global economic-strategic situation.

Some of the most visible of these changes are:

(1) The Bush Administration's about-face on the subject of what is called an IMF "bailout" of Brazil. It is actually a desperate effort to bail out U.S. mega-banks which have the greatest at risk in Brazil.

(2) Steps taken in Europe, in response to the catastrophic impact of the Maastricht Treaty-system, toward Franklin Roosevelt-style, government-guaranteed job-creation programs, and away from the free-market insanity of the Maastricht Treaty.





(3) The rising intensity of coordinated opposition to an Iraq war in the United States and western Europe.

(4) The discrediting of Lieberman and McCain in politically minded circles in the U.S., to the point where neither is any longer considered a viable Presidential candidate.

1. Brazil and the Bank Bailout: Since taking office, U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill had always insisted that mega-bailouts were a thing of the past, and that this was the Bush Administration's strongly expressed position. But the implications of a cascading default by Brazil, and then by others, was too much to contemplate. U.S. banks had some $32 billion at risk in Brazil as of March 31, 2002, with CitiGroup's exposure said to be close to $13 billion of that total.

...more

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Economic reports

Ibero-America

Europe

Russia

Middle-East

Asia

Africa


FDRthis week in history

August 12 - 18, 1971

August 15, 1971 is a day which should be emblazoned in the minds of all Americans, and others, who wonder "what went wrong" in the world economy and world politics over the past 30 years. It was on that day, that President Richard Nixon, acting under the aegis of the likes of de facto pro-consul Henry Kissinger, and international bankers, responded to extraordinary pressure on the U.S. dollar, by taking the dollar off the gold-reserve standard. Thus commenced the era of the "floating exchange rate," in which governments lost control of their currencies and credit, and the international speculators had, increasingly, free rein to loot the world economy.

Despite the fact that the international markets had been wracked by currency crises from 1967 forward, the crisis took most professional economists "by surprise." "Free market" guru Milton Friedman, whom President Nixon revered then, and President George W. Bush worships today, had already established dominance in the economic field, with his insistence that governments should stay out of financial policy. Under pressure, Nixon was forced to do just the opposite.

Not only did the President sever the relationship between gold and the dollar— creating total uncertainty in the domain of exchange rates, and throwing a monkey wrench into international trade agreements— but he also declared a wage-and-price freeze, a rather intrusive intervention into the "marketplace," which went precisely against his ideology. The freeze was followed by six months of wage-and-price controls, as the government explicitly began to enforce a reduction in wages, and a more decisive shift away from a producer-based economy.

On the spot, to point out the earth-shattering significance of this decision, was none other than Lyndon LaRouche. Economist LaRouche, who had just established his political organization a few years previously, had been on record, since 1958-59, as a critic of the "consumer" society, and a forecaster. He had forecast, that if the U.S. did not shift its economic policy toward a pre-Truman approach (i.e., toward international, anti-colonial development), that a series of monetary crises would break out in the mid-1960s, leading toward a potential new world depression.

When President Nixon made his move, LaRouche was publicly vindicated, and his organization began to grow by leaps and bounds, on the college campuses, in particular.

At that point, LaRouche made another forecast, which the last 30 years have more than borne out. He said that the continuation of the application of austerity, and monetarist measures, which Nixon carried out, would lead toward the imposition of world fascism, with a depression comparable only to the 14th Century Dark Age, leading potentially to world war as well.

Many have complained over the years, that LaRouche's forecast did not instantly come to fruition. Indeed, there have been many opportunities for shifting the direction of the world economy, each of them flubbed by a political leadership unwilling to take on the axioms of the post-1971 world....more

Flash:

For Citizens Who Enjoy Thinking

WHY MY CANDIDACY IS UNIQUE
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Monday, August 5, 2002

The once-popular expression was, "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good." The shock of the collapse of such popular delusions of the 1990s as the "new economy" hoax, has caused a good deal of widespread awakening from what had become our students' and citizens' prevalent habit, the habit of preferring to react impulsively, as if by conditioned reflex, rather than actually think.
...more

SocratesIn Depth Coverage
Links to articles from Executive Intelligence Review*.
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History Feature: Century of Disaster...
From Trotsky to Steinhardt: Crossing the Exes
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
For those with cause to remember, it is a stunning experience, to be reminded, again and again, still today, of the number of former U.S. adherents of the exiled Leon Trotsky who either—like Max Eastman or James Burnham—went over to far-right causes; or whose children are today's adult political notables of the far to fascist right.

'Electable LaRouche' Dems Score in Michigan Primary
LaRouche Democrat Kerry Lowry won the Aug. 6 Democratic primary for the Michigan House of Representatives' 19th District, with 61.3% of the vote in a two-way race.

Even RAND Repudiates Anti-Saudi Murawiec
On Aug. 5, a front-page article in the Washington Post reported a recent secret meeting of the Defense Policy Board, the advisory body to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, which is run by suspected Israeli agent Richard Perle.

  • The Sordid Sponsors of Perle's 'French Expert'
    (article begins at bottom right of linked page.)...beginning in 1986, Murawiec covertly began working with a Swiss-based network of intelligence-connected weapons traffickers, whose London and Washington controllers were coordinating, that year, a high-intensity, international campaign of judicial attacks and dirty tricks against LaRouche and his associates. Murawiec was one of their catches.

Economics:

LaRouche and Hard Realities Drive Germany Closer to Reason
With a burst in early August, reaction to the global economic-strategic crisis forecast by Lyndon LaRouche surfaced in Germany's federal elections.

Italy for Project Bonds On German Model Also
The Italian government has decided to bypass the budget constraints of the European Stability Pact (which has so far prevented major infrastructural investment), by creating anagency outside the government budget to sell state-guaranteed bonds, on the model of the German Kreditanstalt furWiederaufbau (KfW). The new agency, called Infrastrutture SpA (Ispa), will be operational in September, said Economy minister Giulio Tremonti on Aug. 1.

Bush Team Panics, Bails Out Brazil's Creditors
Democratic U.S. presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche was blunt, in an Aug. 8 interview: The $30 billion International Monetary Fund package for Brazil announced Aug. 7, is actually meant to bail out Brazil's principal creditors, such as Citibank, J.P. Morgan Chase, and other major international banks.

Raw Materials Looting Behind African 'Peace'
To many political observers, the deals that were signed in Africa to end two of the most devastating regional conflicts, came as a surprise.

International:

Opposition To Iraq War Grows in Europe
August is a month in which great wars have been launched, or the psychological-propaganda offensives for such wars have dramatically escalated. Those with the relevant historical knowledge, would recall the Summers of 1914, 1938, and 1939.

Powell Points Different U.S. Policy for SE Asia
As U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell returned from a trip to South Asia and Southeast Asia on Aug. 4, the open factional battle within the administration has become front-page news.

Millions Celebrate The Pope in the New World
The large crowds that gathered to listen to Pope John Paul II during his latest visit to Canada, Guatemala and Mexico, showed that the popularity of the Pope, unsurpassed in the recent history of the Catholic Church, is unabated despite his physical frailty.

National:
LaRouche Charges: 'Slavery Reparations' Are a Ponzi Scheme
Back in the middle of the 1960s, when the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King was expanding the purview of its organizing into issues of the collapsing economy, a rats' nest of police agents, typified by Newark's Amiri Imamu Baraka, Harlem's 'Maulana' Ron Karenga, and the 'Black Nationalist' Stokely Carmichael, appeared on the scene to split and demoralize the movement.

View This week's Almanac Section*, as a long .pdf file.


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