May 3, 2008 (LPAC) -- One week before Russia's inauguration of its new President, economist Sergei Glazyev gave a major interview to the nationalist weekly Zavtra, titled "Ten Steps To Rein In the Crisis." Striking in the publication is the opening exchange between Glazyev and deputy editor Alexander Nagorny, who noted that Glazyev "and a number of well-known economists in our country and the world, including LaRouche" had long said that a crash of the "global financial pyramid" was inevitable. Glazyev replied with the observation that Russia has already lost $30 billion because of holding its national reserves in the sinking dollar, and added, "If the leaders of the Central Bank and the government had listed to the recommendations from the Parliamentary hearings, which we held seven years ago, those losses could have been avoided."
The hearings to which Glazyev referred were convened by him in June 2001 in his capacity as Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy, on the subject of "Measures to Protect the National Economy Under Conditions of Global Financial Crisis." The lead-off witness was U.S. economist Lyndon LaRouche. Other speakers included the late Academician Dmitri S. Lvov, economists Andrei Kobyakov and Tatyana Koryagina, and Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche. (See EIR of July 6 and July 20, 2001.)
Glazyev did not run for re-election to the Duma last year. He is currently director of the National Development Institute of the Academy of Sciences, and head of the Customs Union of the Eurasian Security Community, which groups Russia, Belarus, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. In a recent media poll, he was named the most-cited Russian economist of 2007.
In his dialogue with Nagorny, Glazyev analyzed the inflationary money-pumping policies of the Federal Reserve. "This process is accelerating," he said, "like a snow avalanche. It began in 1971, when the U.S. leadership stopped exchanging dollars for gold, thus destroying the world financial relations that had existed until that time." He also identified the looting of Russia and the CIS through "shock therapy" in the 1990s as what had kept the "dollar financial pyramid" going into the 21st century. But now, he said, "the possibilities for political blackmail of Russia have been exhausted."
Glazyev's 10 steps heavily feature the notion, which is popular in Russia and has been mentioned by outgoing President Vladimir Putin and incoming President Dmitri Medvedev, of making the ruble into a "world currency" through its promotion within the CIS and Eurasia at large, as well as an immediate shift to the denomination of trade with major partners in currencies other than the dollar. At the same time, he incorporates truly critical measures, such as "activation of the work of state development institutions, to extend credit for long-term investments into promising areas of economic growth." Glazyev concluded by saying that, based on these mesures, "the Russian leadership could initiate the transition to a new global financial architecture," based on the currencies of countries that have a positive balance of trade.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche's latest edition of the call for a New Bretton Woods conference was prominently featured on Glazyev's website, when it appeared in August 2007.
