March 18, 2008 (LPAC)--With the interventions of Lyndon and Helga LaRouche and Giulio Tremonti, the debate in Italy on the financial collapse is at the same time a debate on the New Bretton Woods, on protectionism vs. the free market, on regulation vs. deregulation, on the New Deal, Maastricht, etc. A few highlights:

*** In an interview with the Democratic Party newspaper "Il Riformista," the leading candidate of the Rainbow Left, Fausto Bertinotti (current chairman of the Lower House), says that the New Bretton Woods issue should not be monopolized by the right. The New Bretton Woods is "a reasonable proposal that we should not leave to right-wing spokesmen. I know of ten radical economists who have been saying the same things as Tremonti for years. No one listened." Bertinotti reminds his readers that it was Jacques Chirac who first called financial speculation "a cancer for democracy."

*** Tremonti himself was interviewed by the Rome daily Il Messaggero on the financial collapse. He repeated that "the crisis is a global one, and the solution can only be a global one. Techniques are not enough, we need politics. In 1944 at Bretton Woods, Roosevelt established the bases of a world economic order: we must begin over from Bretton Woods."

*** Guido Rossi, former head of the stock market oversight committee (Consob), said in an interview with La Republica that "the crisis started with the abolition in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act," which had introduced a firewall between savings, commercial, and investment banks.

*** Leftwing economist Paolo Leon, in the dailies Il Giorno (Milan), Resto del Carlino (Bologna) and La Nazione (Florence), says that "there will be a bloodbath" and that there should be a system of capital controls and a public investment program. But Europe is in a "legislative vacuum" because the ECB, the only institution that can issue currency, has no responsibility for such things, while national government are bound by the Maastricht Agreement, and cannot issue debt.

*** Economist Renato Brunetta, from Tremonti's own party and an economic advisor to Berlusconi, attacks Tremonti. "Tremonti is philosophizing," Brunetta says in Il Tempo (Rome). Europe will not be affected by the crisis. Derivatives are "legitimate instruments to invest in the markets."

*** Corriere della Sera describes two factions: one believes that it is another 1929, while the other disagrees. At the top of the second faction, they list Alberto Giovannini, from LTCM and the European Union monetary committee, who says that the crisis is only "one step above the storms of the Nineties."

Alberto Alesina, who wants to break up nations, beginning with Belgium, supports Bernanke's bailouts.

*** The neo-con Il Foglio attacks Tremonti: "We end up talking about tariffs, Bretton Woods, and measures against unfair competition," but nation states are no longer allowed to do any of these things under the rules of the European Union.

*** The daily Europa, also close to the Democratic Party, runs an article entitled "Europe is not Tremontist" and reminds readers that Emma Bonino and Peter Mandelson have recently attacked Tremonti's book in Corriere della Sera.

*** The daily Il Sole 24 Ore writes that "financial circles are increasingly considering the necessity of a radical intervention similar to the Glass-Steagall Act: with the aim of definitely stopping the spiral of securitizations.