Top Left Link Buttons
  • English
  • German

Economic development updates

Category Archives

Webcast: Shut Down the Neo-Liberal Casino Economy, It Is Hopelessly Bankrupt

Schiller Institute chairman Helga Zepp LaRouche issued an urgent call on March 18, which she reiterated in her weekly webcast on the 19th, for closing down the financial system for several days, to have time to enact urgently needed reforms, beginning with Glass Steagall banking separation, to carry out a bankruptcy reorganization of the present financial system. The neoliberal system is bankrupt, she said, due to the shift, which began fifty years ago, from the fixed-exchange rate post-war Bretton Woods system, to a deregulated, speculative casino economy.

The financial crash, which is occurring simultaneously with the spread of the Coronvirus pandemic, will not be solved by more bailouts, which will only prolong the destruction of the physical economy. Further, it will undermine efforts underway to reverse the collapse of the health care system worldwide, which was taken down in the name of for-profit health care, and austerity. What is needed now is full cooperation among leading nations, a global solidarity to replace geopolitics. While there have been some positive steps in this direction, the economic measures thus far remain within the box imposed by neoliberalism, while some officials, such as U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo, continue to engage in geopolitical provocations, as in his attacks on China.

To succeed against the global pandemic, she said, we should listen to the medical team from Wuhan, which waged a heroic fight against the disease. What is needed is love, not finger-pointing. The crisis has provided us with the opportunity to shed all the axioms of geopolitics and neoliberalism, and to act instead in solidarity with our fellow human beings.

Sign the petition


New China-Europe `Silk Road’ Line Inaugurated in Azerbaijan

Oct. 30 — There was great enthusiasm in Baku, Azerbaijan today as the head of state of that country, Ilham Aliyev, was joined by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili in a ceremony to inaugurate the new 826 km. Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway, which was set to take off on its maiden trip to Europe. According to {The Daily Sabah}, the BTK is a “key link in the modern Silk Road Railway” that will carry goods between Beijing and London. Initially, it is expected to carry almost one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of freight annually, but aims to transport up to 50 million tons a year when it reaches its full potential.

Also present at the ceremony was the U.S. ambassador Robert Cekuta, who noted that the BTK railroad is an important part of the New Silk Road, the Azeri news service APA reported.
President Erdogan, who is also in Baku for a two-day visit commemorating the 25th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations between Turkey and Azerbaijan, said at the ceremony that “Baku-Tblisi-Kars is part of a big Silk Road and it’s important that we have implemented this project using our own funds,” most of the $1 billion of which came from Azerbaijan’s state oil fund. Erdogan emphasized that the project will bring “peace, security, stability and prosperity and will contribute to the development of our countries.”

The {Daily Sabah} points out that, as “one of the land routes in the scope of China’s One Belt, One Road Initiative passes through Turkey, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Georgia, the railway projects being launched in the context of the `Iron Silk Road’ have gained significance as they are connecting the regions.” The transportation from Georgia to Turkey is provided via a border tunnel, some 2,375 meters of which are within Turkey’s borders, while 2,070 meters are on the Georgian side. Thanks to the railway network linking the Middle East to Europe via the 13.6 km Marmaray rail connection, “transportation between Turkey and Asia, the Caucasus and European countries will be easier,” {Sabah} predicts.

The new line will reduce travel time from China to Europe to 15 days, twice as fast as the sea route, at half the cost of air freight. Trains can depart from Chinese cities, cross into Kazakhstan at the Khorgos Gateway, be transported across the Caspian Sea by ferry to the new port of Baku and then be loaded onto the BTK to head for Europe. President Aliyev said that several European countries are interested in the project and that his government is in talks with them. Kazakhstan is very interested in transporting goods via the BTK line.


Urgent: Helga Zepp-LaRouche Calls for Short Term Halt of Markets to Reorganize

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the International Schiller Institute, called for closing the financial markets to halt the inevitable collapse of the global casino economy and to reorganize it, shutting down the speculative financial operations which have preyed on the global economy.

TRANSCRIPT

This is Helga Zepp-LaRouche speaking. I am the founder and president of the Schiller Institute.

It is absolutely clear, that after the roller coaster, dramatic losses of the financial markets in the recent days, the systemic crisis is spinning out of control. The only remedy to prevent a further devastation of the real economy, a dramatic increase of mass unemployment, and the loss of lives of the poor and vulnerable segments of the population is to close down the financial markets. This is the necessary first step, to then use this banking holiday to implement the reorganization of the financial system, starting with a global Glass-Steagall separation of the banks, exactly as FDR did in 1933.

The measures which were taken by the European governments and the US, such as credits for enterprises, delays in tax payments, and even possible direct hand-outs of money —the so-called “helicopter money”— while intended to keep the functions of industry, institutions, and the workforce going, will not be sufficient, because the system is hopelessly bankrupt. Most of the enormous amounts of liquidity which have been injected into this bankrupt monetary system after 2008, and then in an escalated way after September 17, 2019, have just increased the activity of the casino economy and the frenzy of the speculators. The effort by the central banks to maintain that speculative sector can only lead to a hyper-inflationary blow-out as in Germany in 1923.

The closing of the financial markets must be accompanied by an immediate emergency summit of the most important governments of the world: the US, China,
Russia, and India—supported by others—to determine the urgent reorganization of the financial system and the establishment of a New Bretton Woods System, as it was intended by Franklin D. Roosevelt and called for by Lyndon LaRouche, to restart the physical economy worldwide.

Such immediate steps are indispensable, since the coronavirus pandemic can only be brought under control if the spread of the virus is stopped and an adequate
health system is established in every country.

This is a test, to determine if humanity has the moral fitness to survive.


Portugal Signs Action Plan with China on Maritime Silk Road

Nov. 1, 2017 -Portugal’s Minister of the Sea, Ana Paula Vitorino, accompanied by representatives of 39 Portuguese port and related companies and industries, is in China for a busy, eight-day visit (10/28-11/4) to concretize Portugal’s participation in the Maritime Silk Road. That includes hopes for some $2.5 billion in Chinese investments in expanding container and other facilities in the Portuguese ports of Sines (towards the south), Lisbon (in the center), and Leixoes (towards the north), as well as in areas of “blue biotechnology,” oceanic aquaculture, and marine industry. The first of two planned high-level seminars took place in Beijing on Monday, with representatives of 86 Chinese companies present. Vitorino’s Chinese counterpart, State Oceanic Administration Director Wang Hong, there spoke of maritime cooperation as an “essential part” of Chinese-Portuguese cooperation, and discussed China’s overall view of the “ocean as an important doorway for China to embrace the whole world.”

Vitorino, for her part, said that “Portugal wants to declare itself a global logistical hub in the Atlantic area,” and “double the value of the blue economy,” to the level of becoming one of the five most sea-related economies in the world. She described Portugal as “a necessary stop on north-south Atlantic routes … [and] a required crossing point in east-west routes.”

That statement echoes Portuguese State Internationalization Secretary Jorge Costa Oliveira’s declarations at the May Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, that Portugal desires that “a maritime route to [the port of] Sines be included, and in addition, that the land rail Silk Road, which already goes from Chongqing to Madrid, also comes to Portugal.”

So far, Vitorino has signed an Action Plan with her Chinese counterpart, outlining collaboration on research and commercial projects as China and Portugal establish an expanded “blue economy” partnership. She met today with the President of the Development Bank of China. Vitorino also reported that agreements had been reached between Portuguese and Chinese companies to form consortia which would compete for various of the planned investment projects. No specific details were given, but the Portuguese businesses represented are leading port operators, construction companies, logistics operators, naval boatyard repair works, engineering, energy, aquaculture, and fish transformation companies, Macauhub reported.


COVID-19 Pandemic Forces Rethinking: International Cooperation Indispensable!

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, zepp-larouche@eir.de

We are now experiencing the worst international health crisis of the past hundred years. This crisis is so extremely dangerous, because the coronavirus pandemic now coincides with the systemic global financial crisis that was already near explosion before the medical crisis broke out. The pandemic was merely the trigger. A solution exists—but only if western societies are prepared to replace all the axioms of the neoliberal model with an economic policy, which is not guided by monetarist considerations, i.e., to speculators’ profits, but guided instead by the absolute value of human life, the principles of science, and solidarity with the entire family of mankind.

Even President Macron of France has recently mentioned what can no longer be overlooked: The liberal democratic political system is ill-suited to react adequately to existential threats. The sooner Europe and the U.S.A. grasp the fact that we must take exactly the same public health measures that China took in January in the city of Wuhan and Hubei Province, the more human lives will be saved. Rather than making use of the time gained for the world by the Chinese government’s decisive actions—correctly characterized by the WHO as absolutely exemplary—the western governments have wasted priceless weeks. As a result, Europe has now become the epicenter of the pandemic and the situation in the United States is quite unclear due to the lack of testing up to this point.

But the necessary reorganization can’t be limited to the area of human health. We need a completely new paradigm in politics and economics if we are to prevent a collapse of civilization like that of the 14th Century. Many scientists in a number of nations are assuming that about 70% of the population will be infected within the next one to two years, at least until a vaccine can be developed and produced. Prof. Christian Drosten of the Berlin Charité Hospital cites a new study that says we can no longer count on a slower spread of the virus in the Spring and Summer. At the same time, it has to be assumed that the pandemic will spread further throughout the Southern Hemisphere during its Winter, and then come back to the Northern Hemisphere in the Autumn, strengthened and possibly in a mutated form. 

This means that we not only have to correct the consequences of the takedown of our national public health system in the recent decades, and equip it in the shortest possible time to treat the expected number of patients. We also have to create the conditions for a global healthcare system in the short term.

Not Unexpected

The current crisis is in no way unexpected. In 1974, Lyndon LaRouche initiated what he called a “biological holocaust taskforce,” tasked to investigate the impact—above all, on the developing nations—of the austerity policy and conditionalities of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. LaRouche and his colleagues presented the results of these studies in a series of reports that warned that the decline in living standards on several continents, which these institutions would be unleashing over the coming years, would lead to the resurgence of old plagues and the occurrence of new diseases and pandemics.

When one considers the conditions in many nations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and even in the poorer regions of Europe and the United States today, it becomes very clear that only a global change of policy can remedy this. About two billion people currently have no clean drinking water and most so-called developing countries have nothing close to a modern healthcare system. Famine exists at the present time in several southern African countries. A locust plague, against which the international community did not act in a timely way, threatens to lay waste dozens of nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America. As a result of the so-called “wars of humanitarian intervention” and the underdevelopment already referred to, millions of refugees have fled toward Europe and America to escape danger to life and limb.

Therefore, if we want to prevent the coronavirus pandemic from spreading in waves and migrating from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere and back—thus potentially creating the breeding grounds for additional similar and worse viruses—we must initiate radical changes.

Systemwide Changes Required

Hospitals with isolation wards must be built throughout the world, following the example of the city of Wuhan and Hubei Province, which built a total of 14 temporary hospitals, including the necessary intensive care beds. World Health Organization standards must be observed in doing so. China, for example, built facilities with 16,000 new hospital beds in just one month.

International scientific research centers must be established for research on the COVID-19 virus and other viral and bacterial pathogens. Vaccines must be developed and tested. The results of research in biophysics, nuclear biology and space medicine must be made available immediately to all nations. The point of reference for this is the conception of a Strategic Defense of Earth (SDE) developed by Lyndon LaRouche, in which the protection of human life from pandemics is one focal point.

These worldwide measures require investments that cannot be made under the conditions of the present, collapsing financial system. The current actions of the central banks in injecting liquidity into this financial system by the trillions of dollars, and even the allocation of budget funds by governments, is due to a hyperinflationary monetary explosion, and is unsustainable.

If we are to fight the coronavirus pandemic successfully, and build and equip the necessary hospitals, we need the total package of actions proposed by Lyndon LaRouche a number of years ago:

  1.  A system of bank separation must be introduced immediately on a worldwide scale, based exactly on the model of the Glass-Steagall Act signed by President Franklin Roosevelt on June 16, 1933. Commercial banks must be put under Federal protection under this system and completely separated by a firewall from speculative investment banking firms and units, which will no longer have any access to the assets of the commercial banks, nor have the privilege of being saved by taxpayers’ money. The toxic paper of these banks, including their outstanding financial derivatives contracts, must be written off. Legitimate receivables that are connected with the real economy or with pensions and other assets of working people should be classified as valid in the new system as well. Some types of claims for payment must be provisionally frozen and reviewed for validity by Federal institutions.
  2. A national bank must be founded in each country, in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton or on the model of the German Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (Reconstruction Finance Corporation) after World War II. Their purpose is to supply Federal credit for productive investments that will provide the physical economy with the necessary funds. The issuance of these credits must be guided by the principles of high energy-flux density and an optimal increase of the productivity of productive capacities and the powers of labor, through an emphasis on scientific and technological progress.
  3. Among the participating countries, a system of fixed parities must be established, and cooperation treaties must be established among sovereign states for the purpose of well-defined infrastructure and development projects. These treaties together represent in fact a New Bretton Woods system as it was intended by Roosevelt, with the explicit intention of providing credit for the industrial development of the developing sector.
  4. An urgent increase in the productivity of the world economy—to accommodate a world population of presently almost eight billion people —must be facilitated through an international crash program for the realization of thermonuclear fusion power and other advanced technologies, in such fields as optical biophysics and life sciences, in order to find solutions for challenges such as the coronavirus. This increase in productivity must also be enabled through international cooperation in space technology and travel, which can establish the necessary next higher economic platform for the world economy, as this concept has been developed by the economist Lyndon LaRouche.

The only institutions which can carry out such a worldwide program are the leading governments of the planet, which must be representative of the entire world’s population in their composition. Therefore it is in no way sufficient that the governments of the G7 should agree among themselves; these solutions can be implemented only with the involvement of Russia, China and India.

That also means that geopolitics must finally be overcome and replaced by the idea of the common future and goals of mankind. If we do not want to fall into a new dark age, we have to replace neo-Malthusian ideas, the anti-scientific “Green New Deal,” monetarism and Eurocentrism with the ideas of physical economy, guided exclusively by the scientifically provable principles of the laws of the universe. 

And finally, perhaps the most important change which we must make in our thinking: We need a new humanist Renaissance, a renaissance of classical culture. For the world has been brought to this point not least by the unbounded hedonism which went along with liberal and neoliberal democracy. The moment has arrived when the ideology of “anything goes” must be put aside. We will overcome this crisis only if we are inner-directed in accord with the love of humanity. But it is for that, after all, that we are human beings!

Sign the Petition

 


International Youth Discussion with Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Tuesday, March 31 at 10:00 am EDT (16:00 CET). The world is in a grave crisis which is unlike anything before. The good news is that, given that it is the terrible policies of the past decades that have put us in this situation, it will be impossible to “go back to normal.” Helga Zepp-LaRouche has called on young people of the world to take leadership at this moment of great change to fight the two deadly viruses now threatening humanity—the coronavirus pandemic and the meltdown of the global financial system. The world must emerge from this crisis with an entirely New Paradigm of peaceful relations among nations, and a new economic system based on cooperation for the progress of all humanity. As is becoming more and more stark with the coronavirus pandemic, an urgent priority will be to build a modern global health system to ensure the right to life of all people on the planet.

This video conference is an opportunity for young people across the world to speak with Helga Zepp-LaRouche and join the fight for this New Paradigm. After opening remarks by Helga, representatives from each nation will give a 2-4 minute report on their organizing, and a Q&A will follow.

RSVP

Join us and participate in the discussion with Helga Zepp-LaRouche and young people from around the world.


Belt and Road Offers Great Future for Italian Ports and Shipowners

Oct. 27, 2017 -Matteoli, chairman of the Italian shipowners association Confitarma, said that the New Silk Road initiative represents a major o ppMario ortunity for growth mainly for Italian ports, since they become the next preferred gateway for goods coming from Asia into Europe, while today, cargo flows are more often offloaded in Northern Europe before being distributed in Central and Southern Europe.

“The Belt and Road project is of course challenging and scary at the same time,” Matteoli said,”but I think that the Italian players should be aware of this great opportunity mainly because instead of being at the terminus of the belt, we could have an inversion of the tendency of what the flows are now. Many industries in the north of Italy import goods from the ports based in Germany and The Netherlands, but the new infrastructure projects could instead invert the trend, and eventually Italy could become the entry point for the goods to be distributed towards the north.”

Matteoli also addressed  a crucial role of shipowners for mankind, stating that “we, as shipowners, have to participate (in the New Silk Road) in order to grant a better world for the future generations.”


Urgent: The Physical-Economic Requirements for Defeating COVID-19

Just as the outbreak of the global coronavirus pandemic is a direct consequence of a half-century of destruction of the global physical economy, which has reduced the planet’s Potential Relative Population-Density in precisely the manner foreseen by Lyndon LaRouche, the war-plan for defeating COVID-19 requires a global alliance of forces to immediately reverse those suicidal policies, rebuild the economy, and launch a crash program to produce the necessary “weapons” to do battle against the disease. Every competent medical expert has stressed that the battles must be waged on a continuum of fronts, in order to win the war: from early detection kits; to quarantine and other protective measures and gear; to advanced hospital facilities with necessary equipment; to the qualified medical personnel with adequate training for these wartime conditions.

The United States, and almost every country on the planet, is woefully deficient and unprepared in all these areas – a deficiency that is not solved by lowering the standards of care, as has been demanded of the CDC, but by gearing up production massively to address the problem. It’s what Franklin Roosevelt did to turn the U.S. into the “arsenal of democracy” to defeat fascism, along with the Allies; it is what must be done today.

President Donald Trump has to take action, and drag the Congress along with him if need be, to forge a New Bretton Woods credit system agreement with China, Russia, India and other nations. Such a working alliance would act as follows:

* The big Wall Street and London-centered banks must be put through bankruptcy reorganization, not bailed out. Bailouts to these banks and their holding companies would again, as in 2008, only be passed along to their thousands of speculative units, client hedge funds, investment banking units, and so on. The big banks’ deposit base would also be looted to keep the speculative bubble—all $2 quadrillion of it—afloat. Instead, restoring the Glass-Steagall Act will put these speculative units out in the cold, while protecting useful commercial banking activity. The large banks will have to sell off their speculative units quickly, stop lending to them, and let them fail. Retirement funds will have that short time to get out of these speculative investments.

* Create a capital budget for new infrastructure construction, including building new hospitals and other public health facilities, and the additional electricity capacity and clean water supplies they need. There is plenty of other new infrastructure needed as well. New Federal bonds, construction bonds, have to be issued for this capital budget, whether by an emergency nationalization of the Federal Reserve or simply by creating a Reconstruction Finance Corporation backed by the Treasury. This infrastructure credit corporation or national bank will cooperate with those of the other founding powers in the New Bretton Woods system, to fund critical projects worldwide and capital goods exports. The projects directly related to COVID-19 include:

* Test kits must be produced on a massive scale, and advanced testing stations must be established – including using drive-through testing facilities such as those employed successfully in South Korea and elsewhere. There is also a grave shortage of RNA extraction kits needed for performing the tests, as the CDC’s director Robert Redfield has warned.

* There are insufficient N95 respirator masks for health care workers, let alone the public. Other components of the required PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), such as gowns, goggles and other protection, are also not available in the necessary quantities. Production must be increased by orders of magnitude, with the government charting the course for the private sector.

* New hospitals must be built, with isolation and intensive care capacity, both in the U.S and all over the world. The COVID-19 virus is extremely infectious and has much worse mortality than influenza. Moreover, virology experts forecast its return over 2020-2021. Modern care ratios of beds per thousand residents must be observed to determine the total number of regular, intensive care and isolation (negative pressure) beds to be built. Similarly, advanced treatment capabilities, such as ventilator units, must also be produced and provided. Consider: China has 60% more hospital beds per inhabitant than the United States. (Most other countries are in much worse shape, and have only minimal capacities.) China added 16,000 beds in the city of Wuhan in just one month. Remember that the United States Army Corps of Engineers did the same thing, just as fast, in Liberia in the Ebola epidemic in 2014. New hospitals with millions of beds can be built by 2020-2021 if a summit of the major industrial and scientific powers determines to do so.

* Build sufficient electric power supply for the new hospitals. Based on electricity use in American hospitals, for 1 million new hospital beds about 6 gigawatts of new electricity capacity would be needed around the world, in about 100 new electric generating units, each of the size of a gas turbine plant or, as soon as possible, a modular nuclear reactor.

* Provide the scientific research needed in the coronavirus pandemic: Scientists have to know much more about COVID-19, even as vaccines are being tested. This demands a cooperative effort of many countries using frontier biophysics, nuclear biology, and space medicine from major spacefaring nations. Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) proposes 12 research centers around the world.

Saving human life, and improving human life, is the most important economic mission.


Turkey wants to join the New Silk Road

Oct. 29 – “China is an important country in all respects. It is a country with which we want to develop our relations, and revive the historical Silk Road together,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said yesterday, in a speech in the southeastern city of Sanliurfa, Xinhua reports. He noted that the Silk Road includes many issues, including those of economy and security.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a prominent participant in the May 2017 Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in China; the country’s {Official Gazette} reported two days ago that Emin Onon, described as Erdogan’s “chief advisor” by Turkey Minute website, has been appointed Ambassador to China.

The pro-government newspaper {Daily Sabah} ran a story that same day reviewing the last decade of Turkish-Chinese economic ties, with an eye to how, “having gained momentum in the last decade, Turkish-Chinese cooperation is set to capitalize on further cooperation with additional joint investment projects to unlock the potential offered by the Belt and Road project.”

“Millennia-long ties between the Turks and the nation of dragons, China, have not always been marked with lucrative cooperation,” {Daily Sabah} wrote, but “history tells us that the two nations have enjoyed the benefits of trading on the ancient Silk Road…. China’s willingness to render the Belt and Road initiative as integrated into Turkey’s development strategy, will also help strengthen the exchange between China and Turkey.”

Among the economic cooperation underway or in the works mentioned by {Daily Sabah}, are ongoing negotiations on construction of the Edirne-Kars high-speed railway route, the agreement on China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corp.’s construction of a third nuclear power plant in Turkey, and promotion of the use of direct renmimbi-lira currency transactions to finance trade and investment by the Chairman Xu Keen of the Turkish branch of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC Turkey).

Xu told {Daily Sabah}, “we will strengthen the market surveys in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region, while acting as the major partner to infrastructure projects including energy power plants, railroads, highways and others, in addition to other projects in Turkey and surrounding regions.”

Likewise, PowerChina (Power Construction Corporation of China) decided at the end of last May to establish its Eurasian regional headquarters operations in Istanbul. PowerChina Deputy General Manager Wang Bin explained, in opening the regional headquarters, that “Turkey is one of the most important countries along the Silk Road and has important regional advantages,”


Webcast—Will Ongoing Shocks Provoke a New Kind of Thinking Necessary to Overcome a New Dark Age?

Helga reiterates the serious warnings from leading German infectious disease officials and looks at the Wuhan model of breaking transmission paths at the outset. Helga calls on countries to coordinate their efforts to conquer this pandemic, including stemming the economic impacts on the global economy, but that doesn’t mean a bailout for Wall Street! See her updated petition.

Helga and Harley discuss the fraud of the just-in-time economy, reminding people of Lyndon LaRouche’s warning that if we continued down the road of zero-growth, the West would no longer be able to support itself and implode. She calls for an end of geo-politics and all efforts to be focused on solving the joint virus and finance crisis.


Page 50 of 57First...495051...Last