THIS WEEK YOU NEED TO KNOW
LaRouche Responds to Waco Fantasy Forum
LaRouche on the Urgent Revival of Infrastructure Through Large-Scale Public Works Projects
On Wednesday, August 14, EIW founder and 2004 U.S. Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche, told associates in Los Angeles, California, that the recent ecoonomic fantasy-forum held in Waco, Texas, requires LaRouche's personal leadership in steps toward launching a desperately needed fight for economic recovery.
LaRouche proposed that the first step, at this moment, should be immediate Federal action to protect the functioning of the air-transportation and railway systems from further collapse, placing both under Federal protection measures, including a restoration of regulatory measures, and using Federally guaranteed credit for renewal, modernization, and expansion of track and essential rolling stock. This action must be taken now, in recognition of the fact that both these elements of basic national economic infrastructure are indispensable to maintain even a minimally acceptable level of U.S. national security.
LaRouche explained that these immediate emergency actions should be considered as a leading edge of a national economic recovery program, mobilized to resist the presently onrushing general monetary-financial and economic collapse, and to maintain and increase levels of employment. All categories of basic economic infrastructure, such as mass transportation, power generation and distribution, national water management, health care, and education, should be among the areas for counter-depressionary emergency measures.
LaRouche emphasized that in Europe, the recent rejection of the Maastricht Stability Treaty's rules against public infrastructural investment, on the part of leading ministers in the Italian government, and a similar tendency in Germany, would not have been possible, except for the leadership which LaRouche is providing. LaRouche's leadership is changing the world.
The overall urgent need to revive American infrastructure, centers on key national infrastructure projects, such as water, power, and transportation, and under the latter: air, rail, and port development. Education is a key issue that is actually handled at the state level, but requires Federal backing. A kind of "Hill-Burton" approach to the education crisis, as well as the crisis in health care, is urgently needed at this time.
Power, water, and transportation are all areas of priority Federal action. There must be a large-scale public-works approach to these matters, with the additional feature of public assistance to regulated private-sector utilities. The approach should be modelled on the Reconstruction Finance Corporation of Jesse Jones (as opposed to Jesse Jackson) under President Franklin Roosevelt. We will provide a modern version of the FDR approach.
People are looking for the national and international solutions to problems that they increasingly see are insoluble under any other terms.
From across the Atlantic, the campaign for German Chancellor by Lyndon LaRouche's wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, a German national, and a leading German political figure in her own right, has met a like standard of leadership, especially for Germany and Europe generally. On Aug. 15, Zepp-LaRouche spoke out on the flood damage ravaging Europe, in statement issued from Berlin, entitled "Fight the Flood Catastrophe with the Lautenbach Plan; Put the Maastricht Treaty Out of Commission, Immediately." Zepp-LaRouche is chairwoman of Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität (BüSo) party, and its lead candidate for the upcoming Bundestag elections in Germany. The statement reads:
"To repair the damage, estimated at billions of euros, caused by the flood of the century, especially in Bavaria and Saxony, as quickly as possible, and to help the affected families in rebuilding their homes, we must immediately launch the measures proposed by German economist Dr. Wilhelm Lautenbach in the early 1930s. The Lautenbach reforms were intended for grave emergency situations, such as an economic depression, a period immediately following a war, and the most severe natural catastrophes. The 400 million euros in aid promised so far, are at best "peanuts," and will simply amplify the fears of the persons affected in earlier floods, that they will be left alone in their misery.
"In such a catastrophe, the necessary reconstruction can only be initiated with a policy of productive credit generation, as Lautenbach proposed it in the fall of 1931, to actively fight the world depression, a policy later successfully implemented by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the U.S.A. Even current Chancellor Schröder had to concede, during his visit to the region, that the financial aid offered so far will be insufficient. His remarks, that the necessary means cannot be mobilized in the framework of the 'Maastricht criteria,' have my full support. But I call on him, urgently, to draw the correct conclusions from this recognition, and initiate, together with European partner countries, such as Italy and France, the immediate repeal of the Maastricht 'stability pact.' I had rejected the stability pact from its very beginning, and have actively fought it ever since.
"In the European capitalsBerlin includedpeople have been thinking about how to bypass the 'Maastricht criteria' for quite some time. The Italian government just decided to officially put up for discussion the guidelines of the 'stability pact'; Italy's Minister for Finances and Economics Giulio Tremonti, and some of his colleagues in the Cabinet, have been demanding, in recent days, to change the 'direction' of this pact, and, above all, take the urgently required infrastructure investments out of this straitjacket for Europe's economyand its citizens.
"Of course, the suspension of the Maastricht Treaty, as well as the possible mobilization of the Frankfurt Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, in issuing project-related credits for the creation of productive jobs, can only be a first step. After all, the entire world economy is in the end-phase of a systemic crisis, which can only be overcome, if the hopelessly bankrupt financial systemincluding the Maastricht 'stability pact'is thoroughly reformed and replaced by a New Bretton Woods. The small-minded approach for overcoming the flood catastrophe shows again, that bold new ideas are needed in German politics. 'I know what has to be done!' "
|