September 15, 2007 (LPAC)--The international conference of the Schiller Institute opened here in Kiedrich, Germany, this morning, with about 350 of the expected 400 guests from some 40 nations attending, so far. In her introduction to Lyndon LaRouche's keynote speech, Helga Zepp-LaRouche presented a review of the recent weeks of the world financial system's final collapse, with all those "conduits" blowing up and exposing the banks as virtually bankrupt, and nobody really knowing how many billions of dollars, pounds, or euros of debt are out there that cannot be rolled over. As the last G-8 meeting failed to establish any transparency, nobody knows how much multi-leveraged debt is out there, and as LaRouche has pointed out: the system is finished. LaRouche said it when he was in Moscow, in May 2007, i.e., that the system would enter its final collapse phase in September, and it has; therefore this conference is held at the right moment to discuss the crisis and what is to be done about it, Zepp-LaRouche said.
Think back to LaRouche's July 25 webcast, said Zepp-LaRouche, and what has happened since: the Minnesota Bridge collapse, exposing the disastrous state of U.S. infrastructure; then, the crisis of the yen carry trade; then, the outbreak of the crises around Germany's IKB, West LB, and Sachsen LB banks, which prompted Jochen Sanio, the head of the financial market watchdog, to speak of a crisis like that of 1931. That is even an understatement, actually, as today's crisis is much, much worse. The Sachsen LB crisis served as the pretext for suspending the Sachsen state constitution for two days, so that the bank could be sold off without asking approval of the state parliament beforehand. All of that has led to a total credit crunch, and at the peak of this development, CNBC financial guru Jim Cramer attacked Fed chairman Ben Bernanke for not knowing what is going on, of having no idea whatsoever.
Lyndon LaRouche intervened on Aug. 22, with his Homeowners and Banks Protection Act, which has been taken to Congress and other institutions as legislation that must be passed with utmost urgency. There is massive counter-lobbying by the hedge funds, to prevent that, but these are "paper tigers," as LaRouche has exposed them.
What is needed, is the New Bretton Woods the Eurasian Land-Bridge, for which our organization has been organizing since the beginning of the 1990s; the time has come for building HTRs, maglev trains, development corridors. Ironically, the Bush Administration's policy has forced the countries of Eurasia into cooperation much faster than they may have done, otherwise: Since the Spring of this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin has put forward a strategic railway development plan; there was the Bering Strait conference in April; initiatives since for a Delhi-Mumbai corridor; a Calcutta-Myanmar corridor; a Himalaya tunnel project between India and China; a Kazakh water development plan; and other such projects, including the Danish maglev debate--these are all positive steps in the direction of the landbridge. There is a worldwide nuclear power renaissance, for which we will fight to bring to Germany, in the nuclear technology and maglev areas. And if necessary, Commander Wu who built the Shanghai maglev in 22 months, will be brought to Germany to get the project off the ground, Zepp-LaRouche said. Following her introduction, a video was shown of Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo's historic United Nations speech of Oct. 1, 1982, inspired by his discussions with Lyndon LaRouche, in which he blasted the vicious cycle of debt that has been strangling the developing sector nations, but he also warned that by maintaining this kind of system, the creditors will strangle themselves. Creditors and debtors belong to the same one world, however, Lopez Portillo said, and it is in the mutual interest of both sides to establish a just world economic order so that there can be production, trade, and well-being for all. The defense of a nation's sovereign rights to growth and development must not be slandered as an alleged "sin" against the system, it is a genuine right which this system is standing against, therefore the system has to be changed, Portillo said.
After the video, Helga recalled Lopez Portillo's statement, during the crisis of 1998, urging that people should "listen to the wise words of Lyndon LaRouche," and that served as the final introduction to LaRouche's keynote address.
