Putin Invokes FDR "Real Economy" Policies And Cites Death of Monetarism, But Risks Serious Mistake On Role Of USA Today

Oct. 10, 2008 (LPAC) -- Russia's governmental web site provides an 18-page of the in-depth discussion between Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Gennadi Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), which took place yesterday at the State Duma. In the course of the meeting, Putin emphasized his commitment to restoring physical economic growth in Russia, and the importance of the Franklin Roosevelt precedent in that regard. At the same time, the Russian prime minister risked making what Lyndon LaRouche called "a very serious mistake" in his conception of what a U.S. role in solving the current systemic financial meltdown needs to be.

Putin is conducting a series of mini-conferences with each party grouping in the Duma. In earlier statements, he went out of his way to recognize Zyuganov as an important political force in the country, who shares the same patriotic outlook as the government's own.

Zyuganov presented Putin with his own summary of the global crisis: "Our view is that the policy of monetarism has essentially been defeated. Sarkozy ... recently said, that anyone who thinks the market is going to sort everything else, understands nothing about the economic situation today. My personal opinion is that the USA will not soon be able to slip out of the noose they tied themselves, when they thrued their economy and finances into a big world casino. They've put out $643 trillion of financial obligations, paper, notes. $700 billion is not going to save them, and neither is $2 trillion."

In this context, Zyuganov went through the aching needs of the Russian economy and population, and demanded that Putin get rid of Finance Minister Kudrin, in particular, and bring in a different economic team. He cited the short tenure of the Primakov-Masyukov government in 1998-99 (CPRF member Yuri Maslyukov still heads the State Duma Committee on Industry), as having laid the basis for what Putin achieved in the past decade.

Zyuganov cited the importance of abrupt changes in policy, such as Franklin Roosevelt implemented, upon replacing Herbert Hoover -- "who was a lot like George Bush" -- during the Great Depression. (Zyuganov ignored the American System roots of the New Deal, instead offering an old communist analysis, that FDR's moves to defend the poor and regulate finances came chiefly from study of the Soviet system.)

In Putin's lengthy reply, he himself underscored his remarks on monetarism, and on FDR, the real economy, and the current financial crisis, as the most important things he wanted to say.

On monetarism: "A pure monetarist policy, and even then not entirely pure, was implemented in the early-to-mid-1990s. And I think you'll agree with me, that recently we have not had some laboratory-pure monetarist policy. Otherwise, we would not have development institutions, a Development Bank, special economic zones, an investment fund, etc. We would not have our industrial sector programs, which we have formulated and to which we have allocated a level of funding, never before committed by the states. To infrastructure, first and foremost."

About the current world economic situation: "You mentioned U.S. Presidents H. Hoover and F. Roosevelt, and I think you did that on purpose. All of that really happened, in world history and the history of economic development. In my view, this is related to the lawful cyclical development of the world market economy. As soon as there's an economic upswing, you get a free market that's under nobody's control. In any event, it is promoted and passed off as the panacea for all ills. And when the cycle goes into minus, goes down, then everybody starts talking about the need for state regulation. What do we see today? The same thing as with Roosevelt before World War II."

"Where you are absolutely right," Putin continued, "is that confidence in the United States as leader of the free world and a free economy, confidence in Wall Street as the center of that world, has been undermined forever, I think. There will not be a return to the previous situation. And that is not only my opinion; leaders of European countries and specialists, chairmen of central banks and finance ministers, are saying this, directly and indirectly."

Here, LaRouche responded, is where Putin risks making a serious mistake: dismissing the USA -- the real, historical USA with its unique Constitutional system for the generation of credit for real economic growth -- as the decisive factor that it must be, for a solution to the current existential threat to humanity. Said LaRouche, "Culturally, the only thing that can save this planet, is that legacy of the United States."