March 10, 2008 (LPAC)--During a major Italian television interview show, Raidue Annozero, broadcast March 6, former Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti shook up the Italian political scene with his strong attack on globalization, and call for a New Bretton Woods system. Tremonti, currently deputy chairman of the Chamber of Deputies, and slated to become economic czar of Italy, if Silvio Berlusconi's electoral alliance (Popolo della Libertà-PdL) wins the upcoming parliamentary elections, has just published a book entitled Fear and Hope, whose release provided the basis for the interview.

We here provide a major excerpt from Tremonti's discussion with moderator Michele Santoro.

Santoro began by referring to the dramatic incidence of workplace deaths in Italy, now at one every seven hours:

``Mr. Tremonti, is this a situation arising from the internal factory situation, or is there something else? You have written a book entitled Fear and Hope. Where does fear come from?''

Tremonti: ``In 1995 I wrote a book entitled The Specter of Poverty.... the specter has come and is a frightening one... I believe that what is happening in the workplace is also the product of what is called globalization. That is--still now in our universities, in the newspapers, in politics, madmen go around telling you: `We need more com-pe-ti-ti-ve-ness!' Competitiveness, speed, violent processes... We are not looking for a dream world, but maybe for a world as it was before, less extreme, less fanatical in terms of the dogma of the marketplace.

Fear: Older people are afraid, who go to the supermarket and have no money to shop. We live in an upside-down world: a world in which the superfluous costs less than what is necessary. You can fly to London for $20 but you cannot buy your daily shopping at the supermarket with 20 euros. This is the point.

Fear is hitting families whose lives are eroded by their mortgage rates. A big crisis is coming. This is the point and the answer to the question. There is a crisis of globalization. [Globalization] is stuck...

Santoro: ``Is this the reason why Berlusconi is being prudent [with his electoral promises]...?''

Tremonti: ``Later, I will answer that.... But I would say that the issue is more general, and that is: starting from the end of the '90s and then, in this century, a group of, let us say `Illuminati,' bankers turned statesmen, politicians turned economic thinkers, false prophets, have listed the benefits, the myth of the 21st century: globalization, the Cornucopia, the Golden Age. Everything has been based, first of all, on the division of the world into two parts: Asia, which produces low-cost goods, and the West, America, the importer of those goods on the basis of debt. Everything was set up using techno-finance, with banks ceasing to do the age-old job that banks have always done: collect money on the basis of trust, and lend it at their own risk. Instead they packaged products and sold them, giving them to third parties.

``The mechanism of techno-finance that financed globalization has collapsed. Not only that: It was a failure itself. You cannot stop the world, but you are not authorized to.... only these `Illuminati' madmen--if you want, I can tell you the Italian names, but I'd better not tell you--thought, when they ruled during the '90s and afterwards, that you can force this on the world. Processes that usually require several decades were implemented in one decade. Do you think that it is normal, that, all at once, 1 billion persons in Asia went from the closed circuit of their life, to the open circuit of the market?...

``Look, I did some calculations. This is not inflation: It is the real increase in the cost of living. In one year, 10 billion euros flew out of the pockets of Italian families, in terms of the increased costs of their bills, increased costs of their daily consumption, the increased cost of life in general. Keep in mind that this 10 billion is paid by those who have the least, not by those who have the most and don't even care.

``Therefore, this is the cause: the specter that was coming, the specter of poverty, has finally arrived, and it is also a specter of the worst poverty, which is spiritual poverty. You no longer believe in anything. You bartered tradition for a future that gives you no future... all this is in my book.

``I want to say that, in order to have hope, you must understand the origins and the causes of fear. And I believe that from different standpoints, we must start in Italy, in the West, to raise such questions.

``I'll tell you one last thing. When the Americans came in 1945 and brought penicillin, with penicillin everyone got better right away. Today you cannot do much with penicillin: You need antibiotics. All these `Illuminati' who run the economy, have managed the current crisis--which is there and is getting worse, it is contagious--with old instruments, with interest rate cuts, with liquidity injections. The organism does not react: On the contrary, it gets worse. The world has changed, and the governance of the world must change.

``We are thinking of a few things for Italy, but we think that if the disaster is global, politics can no longer be local. We are thinking of a new agreement among major countries in the world. Bretton Woods was in 1944; it must be done again. We need a New Bretton Woods.''