Aug. 30, 2007 (LPAC) - An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today offered an hysterical diatribe against the potential for a New Bretton Woods agreement between Russia, China, India, and others. The author, Judy Shelton, is a regular contributor to the Journal who has written a book called The Coming Soviet Crash, and is on the Board of the National Endowment for Democracy. While not mentioning Helga Zepp-LaRouche's widely circulated call for a New Bretton Woods, Shelton rails against Vladimir Putin's call in St. Petersburg in June for a "new international financial architecture," and Putin's efforts to make the ruble into a reserve currency. In particular, she whines that Putin "is determined to establish a world-class oil exchange on Russian territory and shift energy business away from existing global financial centers." (To see what Putin actually said in St. Petersburg, see LPAC: "Putin Says Russia Wants New International Economic Architecture.")

Rather than seeing this as a move for war avoidance through international cooperation, with the U.S. participating (as both LaRouche and Putin intend), Shelton warns that "Russia's next move is to challenge U.S. supremacy in world financial markets.... Russia's leader strikes a chord with other emerging-market economies - Brazil, China, India.... It's a daring gambit and it constitutes no less than a demand for new international monetary arrangements on the scale of the post-World War II Bretton Woods agreement."

If Russia begins demanding payments for its oil in rubles, writes Sheldon, and China continues "flexing its monetary muscle by hinting it might dump a portion of its considerable dollar reserves..., you have the makings of a devastating dollar rout." Reflecting the current British campaign to divide Russia and the U.S. into warring camps, Sheldon concludes: "The next Bretton Woods should be launched as an earnest initiative from the nation that gave birth to democratic capitalism, not as an act of aggression from a pumped-up Russian pretender."