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LaRouche's Historic January 16th, 2009 Webcast

Lyndon LaRouche addressed an international Webcast Jan. 16, just days before the historic inauguration of President Barack Obama. Here are his opening remarks, followed by an excerpt from the discussion which followed. The event was moderated by LaRouche's spokeswoman Debra Freeman.

Debra Freeman: Good afternoon. My name is Debra Freeman, and on behalf of LaRouche PAC, I'd like to welcome all of you to today's historic presentation. As I think most of our listeners know, Mr. LaRouche will be giving a live broadcast from Washington, D.C., just two days after Barack Obama takes the Oath of Office. That broadcast on Jan. 22, at 1 p.m. Eastern Time, will be before a live audience.

But, the demand for Mr. LaRouche to address the nation and to address the world, prior to President Obama's inauguration, in the midst of what is unarguably the worst crisis that our nation has ever faced, was overwhelming. And in meeting that demand, we scheduled today's Webcast.

We have questions that have already come in, from our nation's capital, from Moscow, and indeed, from all over the world. We will continue to field questions as today's historic broadcast proceeds.

Without any further introduction, Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like to present to you, Mr. Lyndon LaRouche.

Lyndon LaRouche: To begin with, before getting into the questions and my response to them, I would remark that I'm focussed, at this point, in my direct remarks here, on the situation posed by the appearance of Paul Volcker, in the committee, the 30 Group, which recently met (see "Failed Bailout Ploy Heading Into Desperate New Phase," in Economics).

Now, the significance of that is this: No one knows exactly what President Obama is going to conclude on the issue of the international monetary-financial crisis. I haven't talked with him; and he has, of course, restrained himself on a number of matters, pending the time that he is the actual President, as opposed to speaking as a President-elect. So my concern is to try to clarify exactly what President Obama must consider, in making crucial decisions which bear upon international relations, particularly those affecting the world economy.

Now, the problem here is, that as most of you know, the President has not spoken on the actual, crucial issues of world economy. Nor has anyone else, really. A few people, hither and yon in the world, have talked about it; but before the public, there has been no competent discussion, of the most crucial issues which threaten and face the world today. And I'm certain, from the performance of the people in the U.S. Congress, that virtually none of them is competent in any degree, to deal with this.

LaRouche's July 2007 Forecast

You will recall, that on the 25th of July in 2007, I forecast the imminent collapse, the breakdown of the international monetary-financial system, as an oncoming process. Three days after that, the breakdown occurred. Idiots and liars, variously, referred to that as a "special kind" of subprime mortgage crisis. It was not. What happened in particular, which bears exactly on what I have to say to you right now today, is that what I was forecasting was not a mortgage crisis, but something quite different: I was calling attention to the fact that the world has been destroyed, in terms of world economy, by a growth of what are called financial derivatives. This plague of financial derivatives took off, shortly after Mr. Volcker's leaving office, under the direction of his successor, Alan Greenspan. And Alan Greenspan did something which no decent man should ever have done, which was to create the financial derivatives bubble which dominates the world today.

Now, what I was forecasting, on the 25th of July, was a breakdown of the international financial derivatives bubble, a bubble which is on the order of magnitude, equivalent to, nominally, about $1.4 quadrillion dollars. And this bubble is still growing, implicitly, until we put it to sleep, and get rid of it.

Now, what we have to do, we are never going to bail out $1.4 quadrillion worth of inflating claims against the world economy. We are going to have to wipe out most of the financial claims from the books! We are going to put the world, which we have to save—a physical world—we're going to put the world into protection. And we're going to put it into protection, by eliminating the greatest part of the nominal financial claims, held by financial institutions of the world today. If you don't do that—which is what most people are afraid to even talk about—if you don't do that, if you don't wipe most of the things that have been subject to bailout, from the books, you can not save the world physical economy from a general breakdown, which would mean that the world's population would probably sink from about 6.5 billion today, to about 1 billion or less, within a matter of a generation or two.

So therefore, if you have any care for humanity, you're going to wipe financial derivatives off the books!

What I warned about, on July 25 of 2007, is that the rate of increase, of self-increase, of hyperinflationary increase, of these financial derivatives, was growing at such a rate, relative to a physically collapsing economy, that the thing was going to break at the weakest point in the system.

Now, what happened, because, again, because of Alan Greenspan's playing with Fannie Mae (and you should never play with your fanny!), but because of that, we'd reached the point, where the subprime mortgage factor had become the reflection, the leading reflection, of the breakdown of the international financial/financial derivatives system!

So, what I was forecasting was not a spinoff from a breakdown of one sector of the mortgage sector, into the world economy, but the world economy's collapse causing, symptomatically, a breakdown of the subprime mortgage sector, which was the most corrupt and weakest part of the whole mortgage system; which Alan Greenspan had used as one of his drivers, for his role, together with the City of London, in creating this hyperinflationary crisis. What is happening is that the rate of self-growth of the financial derivatives bubble, had reached the point, relative to a collapsing physical level of productivity per capita and per square kilometer, which was toppling the whole system.

A Breakdown of the Industrial Powerhouses

The secondary factor in this, was the fact that the United States economy, actually since 1968, the U.S. physical economy had been collapsing, in physical terms—per capita and per square kilometer—especially since 1989; the European economy has also been collapsing, as the former Soviet Union's economy was collapsing.

So what we have, is a process of a collapse, of the physically productive economies, of the United States, in particular, of Europe in particular, and the former Soviet Union, at the same time, that we have been exporting production to cheap labor markets, in places such as China and elsewhere. China is a particularly crucial case, because China has become dependent upon, largely, doing the production for the United States, and in part, Europe. China is the most extreme case. India, for example, has a lower ratio of its total economy that depends upon exports. China has a great part of its present economy that depends upon this export market.

So therefore, as this market collapses, financial market collapses, then inevitably, China collapses. Russia is collapsing, for similar, related reasons. The economies of Western and Central Europe are collapsing. The economies of Eastern Europe, formerly part of the extended Soviet system, actually have been living under worse physical conditions—maybe politically they've somewhat improved—but worse physical conditions than they were under the Soviet system. Poland, for example, is worse off today, than it was under Soviet domination of the Comecon.

So what you have is a breakdown, of what was formerly the agro-industrial powerhouses of the world, including the United States, which have become more and more post-industrial societies, falling to lower and lower levels of technology per capita. While on the other hand, we have been going into cheap labor markets, but we underpay the actual costs of production, as in China and elsewhere, which is in this so-called, "globalized world."

So therefore, we have been operating under an insane trend, since 1967-68, which is the last time that the United States was operating physically, at a net rate of growth. And since that time, as typified by the breakdown in the U.S. basic economic infrastructure, the United States economy has been disintegrating! The level of productivity, the level of scientific progress, have all been collapsing in terms of production. Europe, since 1989, since 1990, in particular, Europe has been collapsing. We have been expanding the markets for production, for a while, in China and elsewhere, in so-called Third World or related kinds of economies. Now, the whole shebang, which was based on hyperinflationary investment and speculation, has now come into a chain-reaction collapse. There's nothing you can do, in terms of reforming the present system, to prevent the entire planet from going into Dark Age.

You can get out of this mess, very simply: Go back to our Constitution, and go back to the thinking of Franklin Roosevelt, as of 1944. We go to that kind of thinking, and put the world through bankruptcy reorganization, and change away from this monetary system we have, which you can not save! You can not save the world monetary system, you can not save the world banking system in its present form: It's impossible!. What you can do, is you can save the physical economy, and return to the principles of the U.S. Constitution, as best understood in the early days by Alexander Hamilton, and go to a credit system, based on the U.S. principle of a credit system, rather than an international monetary system.

The Anglo-Dutch-Saudi Empire

Now, to do this, will require another step: The basic problem of the world today, is what some people call the British Empire. But the British Empire is sometimes a misleading term. Because it is certainly not, if you look at the faces of Britons, it is certainly not the empire of the mind of the British people. What you're looking at is an international, speculative, banker control of the international monetary-financial system.

Now, this empire, through globalization, extends all over the world, and it is a world empire! You can call it an Anglo-Dutch-Saudi Empire, especially since 1973, when that great oil swindle was pulled off, and we've been living under it ever since. But this is the empire! It's like all great empires in European history: They have not been, really, national empires, or empires of nations. They've been empires of financial interests—usurious financial interests. And what's running the world today, is a usury-ridden, financier system, which is now breaking down. The world, the planet, will no longer tolerate this system. And if we try to support the system, the world will no longer tolerate us. That's the problem.

So therefore, the United States must, because only the United States can do this, through our Constitution and our tradition, we can do it! We put the world monetary-financial system into bankruptcy reorganization! Which means that some things that are essential will continue to be paid, or ordered. Our investment in these things will expand. Other things, which people have been using as substitutes for production, in this kind of crazy market, are going to be frozen, just as you do, in any attempt to salvage a business, which is financially bankrupt.

So we're putting the entire world system through bankruptcy reorganization. Doing that, will, in effect, eliminate the present world empire: the Anglo-Dutch-Saudi empire, that is, the banker, the financier empire.

What is required, therefore, is that the United States, under this next President, has no sane choice—none! It's not a matter of what you like or what you don't like: Do you like to survive? Do you wish the United States to continue to survive? Do you wish European civilization to come back? Do you wish to save China from chaos and possible breakup? Do you wish to stabilize and protect India? Do you wish to save Russia, and what it represents in its key role in the world? Do you want a partnership among these forces, who in their common interest, as separately sovereign states, agree to unite, against the forces of empire, and say: Bankers who have swindled, financiers who have swindled, or have engaged in wild speculation, who've now driven the world physical economy to the point of breakdown, these people are going to eat it!

We're going to put the world through bankruptcy reorganization, and take the viable part of the world, and bring great nations together, together with relatively weaker nations, and bring a world system of the type envisaged by Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, and we're going to create that system of cooperation among nation-states, end all traces of imperialism, end all globalization, and go back to the sovereign nation-state and its people. And do it on the basis of the famous principle of 1648, the Westphalian Principle: a group of nations, each of which is dedicated primarily to the interests of the group of nations as a whole. And we're going to build the kind of world that Franklin Roosevelt had intended, in 1944, at Bretton Woods. We use the model of the U.S. credit system, the Hamiltonian conception of the credit system, an introduction of national banking, as a policy, as Hamilton had prescribed this; and use this in cooperation with other nations, to create a sufficient combination of power, to force through the needed bankruptcy reorganization of the world.

Do You Wish To Survive?

If you don't like that, I'm sorry. You either do it, or you're not going to survive.

This is not one of those cases where it's a matter of your choice, your tastes, your prejudices, your traditions, in the ordinary sense: Do you wish this nation to survive? Do you wish this planet to survive? Are you willing to step forward, as in the case of incoming President Obama? Is he prepared to step forward, to make an unprecedented decision, putting the entire world into bankruptcy reorganization, putting the most powerful financial interests in the world into receivership, in bankruptcy reorganization? Shut down the whole derivatives market; freeze it! Save everything that is essential, in terms of infrastructure development, in terms of production, in terms of physical standard of living; and bring together a coalition of nations, which, as a combined power of sovereign states, have the power to take the British Empire, or similar empires, and tell 'em, "You guys are in receivership. You can live, but you're going to live in receivership." And break this present monetary system, which has dominated us, especially since about 1968.

We've got to do that, if we wish to survive.

Now, there are many problems involved in this. What I've just said, is true: There is no sane alternative, existing on this planet, to what I have just said. I don't care what your degrees are, what your opinions are—this is reality! This is not choice, this is reality! This is like the position of a person in command in warfare; and the President of the United States, the incoming President, faces the challenge that the greatest military commanders and leaders of nations have faced in general warfare: this kind of responsibility to act for mankind, with everything that's in you, to act that way.

We do it, or we don't survive! And the President of the United States has to be presented with that fact: We do it this way, or we don't survive! Don't talk about other people's suggestions. They have failed! The leading institutions, of education, and professions, relative to this problem, have all failed: They have failed for over 40 years! And actually much longer. Either we change our ways, reject those traditions of 40 years, and go back to the United States as conceived by the Founders, and as affirmed by President Franklin Roosevelt, or we are not going to survive!

Do you wish to survive? That's the question! Not, "is your opinion going to be honored?" But, "is your opinion worth honoring?" Does it correspond to the requirement of survival?

We are now at that point: We're at the point where the inauguration of the next President of the United States, this coming Tuesday, will largely answer the question: Is this nation going to survive? Is civilization, globally, going to survive? Do we have a President with the backing needed, to make the kind of decisions from the United States, which will enable this planet to survive, and outlive the greatest financial collapse ever imagined, globally.

Physical, versus Money Economy

Well, that involves some other questions: Because what this signifies is that our culture's been wrong! Our educational systems have failed! Our popular opinion has been a tragic mistake. Most things that people have taken for granted and assumed, were wrong! Because, if they had not been wrong, we wouldn't be in this mess! When the Titanic is sinking, don't negotiate for a better stateroom—that's not your job. Get off the ship! And this is the challenge we face today.

Now, what are the problems?

First of all, we have failed to understand completely, the basic principle of physical economy. Don't talk about money economy! Yes, money is significant: managing money, organizing it, this is very important. But what's your principle of economy? I mean, physical economy. I'm talking about per square kilometer of territory; I'm talking about per capita; I'm talking about longevity of members of households. These kinds of things. How do we produce?

For example, let's take the case of India. India's an interesting country; about 63% of the population is extremely poor. They mostly have an agricultural base, and their base is shrinking.

For example, water crisis: India does not have, presently, a secure supply of potable water, for agriculture, and human life. Because we've been drawing down there, as in many other parts of the world, we've been drawing down on fossil water resources, and we've been draining them. Now we're going to have to go to large-scale desalination, to produce clean water, in necessary quantities: Which means, we're going to a global, nuclear, physical economy, especially nuclear power. This will mean, uranium fission; it will mean also thorium fission. Now, in both cases, you use a thing called plutonium to charge a uranium reactor, or to charge a thorium reactor. You have to do that. This means that we take this plutonium, which we have, which has been tanked up as a military resource, and we make it available for its function in charging nuclear reactors, using not only uranium, but the thorium cycle.

India's a perfect example: India's a nation which has, like Australia, a fairly large portion of the world's available thorium resources. Therefore, if we wish to save the population along the coasts of southern India, from this kind of threat there, we have to charge up thorium reactors—and the Indians are prepared to produce these reactors—charge them up, and use these as a way of increasing the potential productivity of a population, which does not have, inherently, present skills needed by the population of that nation, for the 63% of the lower-income brackets of that nation.

So it has a right—that nation has a right, other nations have a right, to have the thorium cycle, as well as the uranium cycle, fully utilized, like fourth-generation nuclear reactors, utilized to ensure that we're able to deal with such a simple thing as the fresh water resources which humanity requires.

So, we have to junk all this anti-nuclear nonsense. We have to go to higher-technology. There are some people who think you can count energy in calories—you're an idiot! You don't measure energy, you measure power! And it's the energy flux-density cross-section of the power source, which determines the potential productivity of that application of energy to production. Therefore, we have to go to high-density nuclear power sources, if we're going to develop the kind of sources required to take a population, now, of over six and a half billion people, rising towards seven, and even to provide the freshwater and other elements required to sustain these populations of the world.

If you're not willing to take on the world, you're creating a situation of warfare and conflict: Therefore, you have to act in the common interest of mankind, but through assembling the independent sovereign nations of mankind, in their common interest, in the same sense that the 1648 Peace of Westphalia got Europe out of over a century of religious warfare. We have to come to an understanding.

Therefore, for example, in this case alone, we have to take Russia, which is a Eurasian nation; that is, it has a combination of European history, and an Asian cultural component, which is largely dominant in the northern part of the Eurasian continent. We take China, with 1.4 billion people, estimated, as its current population, which is now threatened with a crisis beyond your imagination, unless we fix it. We take India, which is 1.1 billion people.

Get the British Out of Africa!

We take the other, relatively smaller, but largely populated nations of Asia. Then you look at Africa: We get the British out of Africa! The British are perpetrating genocide in Africa!—they and their accomplices. Get them out of Africa! Give Africa back to the Africans. Repeal decisions made by the United States in the middle of the 1970s. Restore Africa to its right, as a collection of sovereign states. Which means we must assist them, assist them in developing the infrastructure which is needed, to take a population in Africa, which is largely unskilled, in a modern sense, and to utilize infrastructure and other features, to increase the productive powers of labor effectively, per capita and per square kilometer.

Africa has a great agriculture potential; but disease and other factors destroy that. The lack of infrastructure means that the utilization of improvements needed to realize that, are not there. Africa has large sources of natural resources: Enable Africa to use its territory, its agriculture potential, and its related resources, to become a positive factor in world economy. The world needs it!

Africa is one of the major sources of raw materials required for humanity; as is South America; as is Asia, particularly in northern Russia. These resources must be mobilized, through high technology, to, in many cases, take populations which are poor, poor in skills, but committed to productivity, and by use of infrastructural features, such as mass transportation systems, especially magnetic levitation, by high-density power sources, by large-scale water management, and so forth, and use these as factors to increase the effective productivity of people, who in their present conditions, are not too productive. And that's the way we can solve the problem.

This means, again, as was often said, during the earlier times, earlier decades: We speak of the "common aims of mankind." We think as Roosevelt did, Franklin Roosevelt, about building a world free of empire, a world of sovereign nation-states, which are united in common cause, by the Westphalian principle. And build a world of no empires, but a world of sovereign nation-states. And bring forth our greatest resources: And those resources are cultural resources, the resources of people who came from Europe, into North America, to create a nation free of the worst political diseases and social diseases of Europe!

And we succeeded to a large degree. We were corrupted by European influences, but at the same time, we represented the kind of nation-state which does not exist in any other part of the world. We've betrayed that in large degree; we must return to that.

And as I say, specifically, we must, beginning on Monday-Tuesday, we must hope that the President of the United States will emerge as committed to the kind of perspective I've indicated here, and will reach out to nations, in particular, such as Russia, China, and India; China and Russia have immediate crisis problems. India has a longer-term crisis problem, of one kind, but also threats of instability, coming out of Southwest Asia today.

We must bring these nations together, representing a great part of the world population, and use that unity of cooperation—of Westphalian cooperation—among these four powers, and others, to break the power of empire, which we must destroy, if we're going to finish off this financial system which is killing us, now.

We have to change our ways in that sense. We have to have a President who has the courage, and that President must be defended, and supported, as if he were Franklin Roosevelt. We have to go back to what Roosevelt had intended, before he died: We have to rip up the corruption, which Harry Truman and others introduced—to betray us, and to betray our great mission!—which we had going into World War II, and get back to fulfilling that obligation, now.

We Have To Change Our Ways

That means, we've got to change the way we talk about economics: We've got to stop talking about money, as such, and realize that money is merely a means of exchange. We must regulate it; we must regulate banking. We must go back to the kind of banking we had under Glass-Steagall. We must get back to that! We must separate the banking, in which you put your money, if you have it, for deposit, which the local community depends upon for its lending practice and so forth: We must put this section of banking back into business! As chartered banking, under the kinds of protectionism which Roosevelt, for example, exemplified. We must take the other part of banking, the high-risk part, separate it, look at the garbage, and put the garbage through cancellation. Financial derivatives don't contribute anything to a world economy! It's gambling debts, and the policy of the U.S. government is, "We don't pay gambling debts. If you lost, you lost. You gambled, and you lost."

But we must protect those banks, those state and local banks, which are chartered banks, which are banks of deposit, which are the reference point for investment. We must provide the credit, generated by a Federal credit system, to ensure that those banks which are now mostly bankrupt as a result of recent policies—especially the policies of the U.S. Congress!—under George W. Bush, since the Summer of 2007: Those banks have been bankrupted. But we must save the chartered bank element within those banks! Restore it! We must freeze claims of other kinds, and probably cancel them, because they're simply gambling debts, and we are not obliged, as a nation, to pay other people's gambling debts. Let them go bankrupt.

We then, in turn, having cancelled these claims against the economy, must create a new flow of credit, under our Constitution. And that flow of credit must ensure that the local chartered bank, and the local national bank, are able to perform their traditional function, in cooperation with government, for creating a system of long-term credit, to generate the rebuilding of our economy: agriculture, industry, infrastructure.

We have a population which has largely lost skills. People who have not worked at skilled labor, over the past 40 years nearly, certainly are not very productive. They know how to push a pencil, they know how to play with a computer, and play with other things: But they don't know how to produce, in the way we used to produce. Therefore, we have a largely unskilled population, with a shrunken section of the machine-tool-sector skills, and we have to amplify the productivity of an unskilled population—which is what most of our population is, in terms production—we have to amplify their productivity by increasing the infrastructure which affects productivity. We must increase, we must concentrate on high-energy-flux-density power sources, which means nuclear power largely!

We must go to mass transportation—forget the automobile as a mass transit unit! Automobiles are for local transportation. High-speed rail and similar kinds of transport are the way to go. We overuse air travel, for relatively short-term travel. Air travel is strictly for long-term. We can produce, now, we can produce systems of over 300 miles an hour. Efficient systems for mass transportation. We're using too much aircraft travel. We're using too many cars on the street. Too many cars on the highway. We should have efficient mass-transit systems of various kinds, where people can be transported.

For example, I've spoken of this before: You have, outside of Washington, you have an area around Washington, D.C.—it's a market area. You look at it as a market area, it's an area from which people come as far as two and a half to three hours each way commuting, into the Washington area, or that approach. Now, just think of what that means: Suppose we're talking about three hours; that's six hours a day, five days a week. Now what does that mean? If you're taking a person who's working eight hours a day, and not being paid for lunchtime and things like that, and now has five to six hours a day spent on commuting time, what kind of a family life do they have? What kind of a society do you have?

We need efficient, high-speed mass-transit systems. We need to go back to much more distribution of production away from a few large centers of mass industry, into regional development; smaller industries, more emphasis on closely held corporations, on smaller, high-tech corporations in industries. We need to rebuild the idea of a community, where you can walk to work in a quarter-hour or half an hour each way, at most, each day, which is what we used to have, years ago. That's the way we were organized. And leave these extra hours we're now wasting, sitting in a useless car, smelling up the gas fumes from the other guy's pipe, and getting sick, and having no family life, and leaving children, if you have any, at home, without much cultural backing and development. We're crazy!

A Mission Orientation

So, we have to go now, to a shift toward long-term investment, in high-technology, mass-transit systems, power systems, water systems—remember the time you could safely take a drink of water from a faucet? In an average home? In an average community? Can you do that now?

We have to reverse those trends which have led us to that effect. We have to go into long-term investment; we're talking about 25-year investment for industries; we're talking about, for power systems and things like that, you're talking about 50-year investments. For larger systems, you're talking about 100-year investments. We in the United States, and other nations must cooperate with our credit systems, to assure that the technology is mobilized, and that the credit is created, low-cost credit is created to fund these changes, for the better—back, for the case of the United States, to what we used to think, back while Kennedy was still alive, President Kennedy; and back to those standards which most of us accepted in this country, then. And that's all we have to do, is go back to the kind of mentality which built the space program. Which we can't do any more! When did we last put a man on the Moon? We lost the capability to do that.

We have to invest again, with a mission-orientation, which is multi-generational: 25, 50, 100 years. And we have to mobilize the credit, at low interest rate, and commit to improvements in technology, to do that. We have to enter into cooperation, with nations such as China, Russia, and India, and other nations, as a bloc, to create the kind of world that Franklin Roosevelt envisaged before he died: To rebuild a world, free of imperialism, and he meant British imperialism—free of imperialism, which is what our destiny was, and commitment was, among many of us, going into what became known as World War II. We have to think that way. And we have to have leaders who will think that way, and will talk that way. We need above all, a President, who will think that way.

Thank you.

DIALOGUE

FREEMAN: Thank you, Lyn. In addressing the questions that have come in, let me say that I will take some liberties, because we have many questions that address the same issue. We also have questions that are more specific in nature, on issues that Mr. LaRouche did address in the course of his remarks, but obviously, some of our listeners require clarification, and obviously, these are extremely difficult issues to be taken up.

From the U.S. side, most of the institutional questions that we have come from people who are involved in the Transition to a new administration. We also have a significant number of questions from Capitol Hill, and in something which is a bit different from some of our previous broadcasts, we also have a number of questions that have come in from Russia, from Ukraine, from Belarus, which I will entertain during the course of today's proceedings.

I'm going to try as much as possible to group the questions, according to certain broad categories. And I am going to begin with some very broad, general questions, before I move to some of the more detailed and specific ones.

Lyn, the first question is one that has actually been posed in a variety of forms, both by people here in Washington who are part of the American side of D.C.'s institutions; but it's also a question that has been posed repeatedly by some of our friends in the diplomatic corps, and as we moved into today's event, it's a question that has been posed by several people who submitted questions from around the world.

What they are basically saying, is, they say, "Mr. LaRouche, when you talk about new international arrangements, and most specifically your four-nation agreement, you've talked repeatedly about considering India and China as participants in that agreement, obviously for many reasons, but also principally including the fact that these are nations that have populations in excess of a billion people.

"My question to you is this, why do you not consider a 1.2 billion population which serves as the majority population in more than 56 countries? And as a minority population in any others? Obviously, what I am talking about are the number of people in the world today, who are followers of the Muslim faith. It seems to me, that it is essential for America and other world leaders, to begin to consider this problem: to know Islam, to know its ideology, and to try to cope with them, rather than controlling, or invading, or challenging them.

"I understand fully that the so-called 'Islamic countries' are each individually sovereign nations, and that they are quite different in their goals, in their plans, in their leaders, in their economies, and so forth. But it is also the case, that the overall system of Islamic rules and ideology is somewhat unique. And it seems that in crafting any system, there has to be some way to take this into account, even though I'm well aware of the fact that there is no sovereign nation called 'Islam.'

" Do you see this as a problem? Have you thought about it? And how do you propose that we begin to address it, as we think about crafting a new financial architecture?"

LAROUCHE: Well, the idea of an Islamic factor, politically, in national agreements, does not work. As you see right now—for example, the country with the largest Islamic population is India— not Pakistan, India. You have Pakistan is dismembered, itself. You have a—.

Well, let's get to really, the "dirty word," here. The dirty word is "empire." And if you go back to Lord Shelburne, who was the author of the British Empire in the functional form of a private company, called the British East India Company, which was actually an imperial power in its own right, with its own armies, its own means, and so forth. And the British Empire, was never really the British people. The British Empire was defined, under Shelburne, as a model of empire based on the Roman Empire. And he referred to, specifically, what was referred to was, what? Julian the Apostate, the Emperor Julian the Apostate is the British model.

How did the British model work? Now, the British have created imperial wars on this planet. For example: The Seven Years' War was the war that created the British Empire. The British group, which was a financial group not the British people, but the British group—Anglo-Dutch Liberal group— organized a war among the nations of Europe, a mutual war. The depletion of Europe in seven years of this war, produced a Peace of Paris, under which a British Empire was formed as a private company, under the leadership of Lord Shelburne. The British Empire organized Napoleon Bonaparte! Napoleon Bonaparte was an asset of the British! Whether he knew it or not is another question. But the Napoleonic Wars, which, again, were wars on the continent of Europe, ruined Europe to such a degree, that Europe has never fully recovered from that, since. Europe is still under an empire! It's an empire of international financier interests, sometimes called the British monetary system, or the European Monetary System: Which is an empire!

Now, how does it work? Julian the Apostate's method. Go back to the Roman Empire, or even earlier empires. How do they work? They work by organizing people, around religious and related conflicts, cultural conflicts. For example, take the old question of Southwest Asia. What's going on there now? Well, it's an imperial operation. Who runs it? It's an Anglo-Dutch-Saudi financial in-group that runs that warfare. What's that called? It's called the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The entirety of the war in Southwest Asia, including what is going on in Gaza, today, including what's going on against India, in that fragmented nation called Pakistan, in Central Asia, today—what is it? It's the British Empire! And which takes every part, and every religious group and divides it!

You got the Wahhabite section, which became more significant during the period of George Bush I, back in 1979. We organized this war in Afghanistan as a lure, under Brzezinski, to get the Soviets trapped into a war, in Afghanistan, which would be comparable to the folly we were subjected to by getting us, through a lie!—into a war in Indo-China.

You look at the history: World War I. How was it organized? It was organized by the King of England, when he was still Crown Prince. How'd they do it? Well, they got rid of Bismarck. Bismarck was determined to prevent another Seven Years' War in Europe, and made agreement with the Russian Czar and others, to sabotage any effort to get Germany in support of Austria in a Balkan war. So, what did the British Empire do? They got rid of him. And he recognized it, why? He said: Their effort was to start a new Seven Years' War. What is that? That's what became known as World War I! That's what became known as World War II! That's what became known as the crisis in Southwest Asia, today! That's what they do in Africa. That's what they do in South America.

You have one of the world's worst drug pushers, a guy trained by Nazis, to be what he's become today, George Soros, who's the biggest drug pusher in the world! Mexico is threatened! The United States is threatened, because of George Soros, and his operations in Mexico! George Soros is the big organizer of drug traffic throughout the Western Hemisphere. You want to clean up the Western Hemisphere? You want security in the Western Hemisphere? And South and Central America? In the United States? Get rid of George Soros! And get rid of what he represents. Who's he work for? He works for the British Commonwealth! He's a British agent!

Pulling the same kind of thing: What do you think happened in Gaza? Why should anyone go to a war in Gaza of this type? Why should the Israelis do it? Because they're manipulated by the British, entirely. And Cheney. And Cheney, who is essentially more a British agent, than anything else. He and his wife. And they set this operation up, which was intended to ruin the possibility of U.S. stability under the incoming President Obama. And Soros is a part of that.

What's the problem in Ukraine? George Soros! George Soros, with the help of Cheney, ran the operation, which is the problem in Ukraine, today.

So, in Islam, the same thing: What do you think the population of India is? There're more Muslims in India, than there are in Pakistan! Want to have it unified? You can not unify Islam, as long as the British Empire exists.

The Saudis run a different operation, contrary to the interests of others.

Our view is, we respond to one kind of institution: The institution is the sovereign nation-state, and a nation which is unwilling to be a sovereign nation-state and to organize on some other basis than that of the sovereign nation-state, and the principle of the rights of the human individual on this planet, through their sovereign nation-state, anyone who tries that, is sending the world to Hell.

So, it may sound nice—"Can't we get all Islam together to agree..." You can never get Islam together! You'll never get it together! Not as long as the British Empire has its influence there. For example: You had a terrorist operation which was run in Mumbai, used to be known as Bombay. It was done while I was there, in India, recently. Where did it come from? From London! London ran that operation, not Pakistan! Yes, there were people in ISI—MI6's ISI, who were key in that. But it was Britain. Who was running, who was protecting these guys in London who were running terrorism in Mumbai? And by the way, this is the most serious terrorist threat the world has known yet. Because what was done in Mumbai, that organization represents a repeatable phenomenon! Well, 9/11 was the same kind of thing, it was the same kind of operation, initially. But it was a onetime operation. What was done in Mumbai was not a onetime operation, it's a many-time operation. Small terrorist operations which destabilize countries.

Now, where'd it come from? The center of this was inside the Church of England. And you had people who were part of the Wahhabite influence in the Muslim community in England, who were part of the extension of this international terrorist operation. It's well known, all the documentation is there; anybody who knows the region, knows it. This is not a mystery. Somebody tells you it's not true, tell 'em go back and get your education; you're not qualified for intelligence.

And so, you had the Archbishop of Canterbury is protecting agents inside the Muslim community in England, and most of the Muslim community in England are perfectly decent people. But you got a few real wild animals; they are controlled by the Wahhabite center in Saudi Arabia. And they're British agents. They operate through Dubai, which is the center of international drug trafficking, and gold and so forth, and other kinds of trades in the world. And that's how the thing is controlled.

Before you can deal with the nation-state, or deal with any group of people as a nation, they must have a certain kind of coherence, that of a nation. And the Muslim population of the world today, is not a nation. And the British play a game with them, and they say, "Aha-ha-ha!"

Well, look, for example: Take the case in Gaza. How'd it happen? Well, the Gaza operation was planned by Dick Cheney, and the British, in January of 2008. And it was kept on ice for the post-November 2008 election year. It was supposed to come off between the time of the election and the inauguration of the current President of the United States, or the President-elect. So, now, what happened? You have a factor inside there, inside the Muslim population of the world, which is called the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, just as Sykes-Picot, the entire politics of the Middle East is all controlled by London, under the Sykes-Picot arrangements. One feature of the Sykes-Picot is the Muslim Brotherhood, which of course, has many different characteristics in different places it operates—especially in Egypt. But the Gaza Strip, the Hamas, essentially was controlled top-down by the Muslim Brotherhood! So, what happened, is they agreed, two British assets—one, the Muslim Brotherhood; it's a British asset; and the other side, you had the other British asset, the Israeli government. And the two of them, under a Sykes-Picot agreement decided they're going to have a war with each other. Not because the people of the Gaza Strip wanted it, but because the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood wants it.

So you get the Saudi operation, which involves intercepting acquisition of Iranian missiles; somebody takes these missiles which are taken away from the Iranian source, and they use a couple of these missiles and fire them into Israel, as a part of Cheney's effort to get a war attack going on Iran, before the inauguration of the next President.

This is the kind of problem we face!

If there is no agreement in principle, that is, in a principle of relations among nation-states, sovereign nation-states, then it's not—you can negotiate with it, you can deal with it as a phenomenon, you can respect the rights of people. But you can not allow the creation of blocs of types which are controlled by an empire such as the British Empire. And when people talk about bringing Islam together today, what they're talking about is turning it over, Islam as a force, controlled by the British Empire: You're talking about a return to the Pantheonic principle of Julian the Apostate. And that's poison. I don't care how much I love the Islamic peoples. I'm not going to endorse their taking poison.

FREEMAN: Okay, Lyn, the next question. And this is from one section of the Transition group. They say: "Mr. LaRouche, this may seem to be the most basic and general question, but I think that you understand, that we have spent countless hours debating it. When you talk about a New Bretton Woods, and you did it again, today, you said that you were talking about a credit system, not a monetary system. And this is causing tremendous problems in conceptualizing exactly how to bring such a new system together.

"Is it necessary from your standpoint, that we create two completely separate agreements? On the one hand, a new financial architecture, with agreements tied to it as to how each nation will value its money, and everything that's attached to that? And then, as well, an international credit arrangement, that would be directed toward multinational approaches to great projects, etc.? We are having tremendous difficulty conceptualizing how to bring the two together. They seem to be completely separate entities, requiring completely separate agreements."

LAROUCHE: Well, I agree, you can not bring the two together. You shouldn't try. You should cancel the monetary system. You have to cancel the monetary system!

Now, first of all, if you're a patriot of the United States, you have to do it that way. You may be a misguided patriot, but if you're not a misguided patriot, and you think you're a patriot, you're really not on the right course.

Look. What's common about the U.S. Constitution? Involved here? You're talking about two things: Agreements among nations and the credit system. Look at the Constitution! There is no difference! If you adopt the U.S. Constitution, in terms of a credit system—and it is our law! Any time we are operating not under a credit system, we are violating our law! What is that law? The President of the United States, or the office of the President of the United States, prompts the Congress, through the House of Representatives, to authorize an utterance of credit, monetizable credit. Hmm? On the basis, of the monetization of that credit, or the potential monetization of that credit system, operating under the rules of agreement which the Executive has struck with the Congress on this utterance, you now issue credit. There is no money, or no monetary aggregate, which can be issued and uttered in the United States, which is not done under that Constitutional arrangement. We do not allow a monetary system!

Now: Then you talk about relations with other states. How do we create a treaty with other nations? The same procedure! The Executive branch, at least in responsibility, initiates a suggestion that it wants to do something, or the Congress induces it to say it wants it, a treaty agreement with other nations. Hmm? On the basis of the Congress accepting that treaty, whenever it comes out of the negotiation, the United States now has a treaty relationship with another nation!

So the question of treaty relationship with another nation, and a credit system are identical.

What is wrong, is entering into monetary agreements with other nations, outside the credit system, outside our Constitutional system.

There's no need for it; we shouldn't do it. It's a violation of our Constitution. Admittedly, we have British influences in the United States, who believe in a monetary system. What's a monetary system? A monetary system is a private organization, of international bankers, and similar kinds of scoundrels, which forces a government to make an agreement with it. Like the old British system under the Bank of England. But the currency, the utterance of the currency, the monetary aggregate, is not created constitutionally! It's created by a private organization, which enters into agreement with nation-states, to submit to its sodomy! Hmm? Monetary sodomy is what you call it.

Now, I'm for the repeal of monetary sodomy! Especially among nations, and especially involving the United States. We are going to cancel—if we have any brains—we're going to cancel the existing world monetary system! We're not going to negotiate with it. We'll negotiate with nations, but not with the monetary system, because we are going to cancel most of the monetary aggregate. Especially that which is tied in with this big, hyperinflated mass of $1.4 quadrillion dollars' estimated value in financial derivatives! We're going to cancel it! It's gambling debts! Monetary systems are gambling systems!

For example: You have the same thing with the question of Glass-Steagall, same issue. Our system, our intent, is to utter credit and control credit through Federal and state law, governing the formation of banking institutions. And the idea was to protect the chartered banks, while keeping the gamblers at a distance! Don't let the gamblers come in, and take over the chartered banks, which is what happened under George W. Bush. The gamblers came in and took over the chartered banks. So, we're going to have to cancel that. We'll put it through bankruptcy reorganization, and these monetary systems will cease to exist, because they've been put through bankruptcy reorganization.

Now, when somebody comes to us for credit, from the Federal government, we say, "okay, we have a procedure on credit." Our credit system is controlled by law, by Constitutional law. We operate by Constitutional law. And this crap that you've been passing off on us, is gone.

Look what happened, for example: I made the announcement, and proposal, first on the 25th of July in my forecast of what was going to happen—which did happen! And then, as of three days later, we began to have the great collapse, which I had just forecast. Now, what was the response to it? I laid forth three principal conditions, for action by the Federal government, as interim actions for security. And proposed that this had to go with a general agreement, including an international one, to deal with this system.

Instead of doing that, under the Senator from Connecticut, and Barnum & Bailey Frank, we got a series of motions which are clinically insane, and potentially criminal! And we have bankrupted our banking system, we have bankrupted the United States, through these measures, for which Barney Frank is the key target, of humor and hate. For this reason: Barney Frank and his co-conspirators have done more to destroy the U.S. economy than any enemy of the United States could ever conceive of doing. And they've done it from the inside, through Wall Street. We're going to have to cancel that!

The question is, how many of these people belong in prison? Not in the Federal government: We need a Pecora Commission! And we need a big one this time! That was just a trial run. What we need now, is a big one! And if you got any empty places in jail, let us know about it, we may have to use those places for people that this new Pecora Commission will send there.

So that's the point: We have to clean the system up. You have to get an agreement to this. The argument is, otherwise, how did we get into this mess? Here you had the United States, the most powerful nation the world had ever known, just came out of World War II, had demonstrated, despite Truman, what it was capable of doing—and practically, through Kennedy's work—and we take this great nation of ours, the greatest nation on this planet, which emerged from World War II as practically the only nation on this planet! Prepared to build up the world system of sovereign nation-states, through a credit system.

Then you had, of course, Truman brought in the British, and Roosevelt was going to break up the British Empire! Truman acted to save the British Empire! The United States had freed Indo-China from French imperialism. Truman, in backing the British, put the French back in charge of Indo-China, recolonized Indo-China. The same thing was done to Indonesia. The same thing was done, in various forms throughout the world. So where Roosevelt had been committed to a post-war world based on sovereign nation-states, Truman, and others of his type, his ilk, returned the empire back to the British! This is a virtual act of treason! We had created the greatest nation this world had ever known. We saved the world from Nazism—we did it! Yes, others fought, but without us, they wouldn't have won. And we were betrayed—again, and again, and again. We've been looted and betrayed.

And those of us, who cherish what the United States is, what it represents as a distillation as the best of European civilization, it's something we're going to have to defend. And we have to decide: Are we going to come to a nicey-nicey agreement, with all kinds of assorted people, and get into another great compromise, of the type that led us down the road to this disaster we're in, today?

You've got to get rid of this legacy of Liberalism, and go back to defend our Constitution, and the principles it expresses. Under those conditions, we, in partnership with nations such as Russia, China, and India, and other nations which would literally join us in that, we can save the world.

If we go the compromise way, we can't. You're on the side of humanity, or you're not. And people who have questions have got to check their own morality: Are they willing to take the moral position? Are they willing to defend the intent of the Constitution? Are they willing to discuss the intent, and assess the issues on the terms of that intent? If not, we're not going to make it. And trying to be nice and get a nice agreement on this thing is not going to solve the problem: You have to change the habits of people, including the habits of thinking.

This country was not put into this mess entirely by the ordinary people of the United States. This country was destroyed by the influential layers, especially the politically influential layers of government. You want to save this planet from the effect of those influential layers? Well, you're going to have to offend them. You're going to have to do things that they may find offensive. But we're going to go back to the principles on which this nation was founded. In the intentions which our best Presidents and others have represented, and our regard for building a system of sovereign nation-states on this planet.

FREEMAN: We are going to come back to the question of a Pecora Commission and exactly what the Commission should be tasked to investigate. But before that, I want to entertain some questions that have come in, on the question of the magnitude of the problem here in the U.S. and what is necessary to address it.

Lyn, the first question comes from a national official inside the labor movement, who is addressing the question of the adequacy of the proposal that was voted up by Congress yesterday, at the behest of President-elect Obama. He writes: "Mr. LaRouche, according to all estimates, we need approximately 1 million jobs, new jobs, per year in the United States, just to keep up with our growing population.

"Before the current crisis hit, under the Bush Administration, we averaged something in the area of 800,000, an obvious shortfall. However, over the last year, we lost 2.75 million jobs. And currently, we are losing approximately a half-million jobs per month. And by all estimates, unless radical action is taken, that will escalate.

"Right now, we are a minimum of 10 million jobs short, just to keep up with our current levels of operation. And that does not get included, in any way, in official unemployment figures. In addition, there are those people who are not counted as part of the unemployed, because they stopped looking for work; and there are those who wish to work fulltime, but who work part-time, who similarly are not counted as unemployed. Those people outside of the millions of Americans who are included in the unemployment figures, are easily an additional 20 million. So, just off the bat, we can identify a minimum of 30 million people who need work, who don't appear in anyone's statistics.

"Even more alarming, according to a recent report that was issued by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, over the course of the next several months, again, if radical action is not taken, 10 million middle-class Americans are going to be thrust into poverty; and an addition 6 million, again, middle-class Americans, will be thrust into what they define as 'deep poverty,' operating at incomes which would amount to 50% of what's currently defined as the poverty level.

"There is no way around it: This portends a great national catastrophe. Yet, in the midst of this, President Obama's plan, although it does amount to some $800 billion in spending, includes only $90 billion that would go directly toward infrastructure.

"How do you propose that we address this overall situation? And how can we address it, rapidly enough, to stop the catastrophe that seems to be looming?"

LAROUCHE: Okay, well, let's be concrete then; these are concrete figures and concrete problems. Now what I propose is, stop kidding yourself about the automobile industry. The automobile industry was destroyed by the U.S. economy, by the government and by private interests, a long time ago. It was destroyed, essentially—the process of destruction occurred, really, in fiscal year 1967-68. Because, that was the year, in which the net increment of basic economic infrastructure went negative.

Now, basic economic infrastructure is concentrated in things which are long-term investments in improvements of public transportation, all kinds of power systems, and so forth. Water management systems.

Now, these water management systems and power systems have a certain kind of physical life-span, and the physical life-span runs between 25 and 50 years, largely. Some are 100 years. For example, how many communities, in which, during the 1960s, the residents of that community could draw down safe drinking water, still can do that today? How many people are buying bottled water, instead of taking safe drinking water from a faucet? What happened? The system went down.

Look at the river systems of the United States: Take the principal river system which is on axis of the Mississippi, north-south, and it runs in two directions. One is typified by the Tennessee Valley system, the Ohio system, on the one side; and then you get, on the other side, the Western states' section, the Missouri River and so forth. Now, what's happened there? First of all, we never developed a system of water management, of comprehensive water management, of river management, north of St. Louis! Secondly, where we had developed one, along the Mississippi, along the Ohio, and so forth, it's destroyed—why? Just attrition.

How do we build these systems? Well, as I said some years ago, back in 2005, if we take the floor space and the people in the communities, which used to be the major auto industries, and look back at the history of these institutions—go back to World War II, for example. How did we make railroad systems? How did we make aircraft for World War II? And so forth. How did we make these systems of water management for rivers? We did it on the top-down approach: We start from science at the top level, physical science! You go down from physical science to machine-tool design, as a byproduct of science for production design, of production of the essential components which go into anything.

You want to build a national railway system, to replace what was destroyed? You want to build a river system, to replace what was destroyed? You want to amplify the river system management? What you do, is you take the section of the population which is still highly skilled , with scientific and related skills: Use that as a cadre. You take the communities in which they used to operate, with a large floor space, sometimes used in the past for auto industry. And you take the population of those towns and cities, who are accustomed—that is, culturally—accustomed to working in these kinds of industries, these kind of production.

So, instead of producing many automobiles, which doesn't work, what you do, instead, is you produce other things, like putting in a mass transit system! You fix the river system.

Now, these are investments, which are in the order of magnitude, as I said, up from 25 to 100 years, general order of magnitude. So therefore, what you require, is the Federal government must create a system of credit, at 1-2% interest rate, for these kinds of long-term projects.

So the U.S., instead of going into debt to pay off this, and bail out banks, we should take the money back! Take it back. We shouldn't have given it out in the first place. My question is, was there really corruption on the part of Members of Congress, in pushing this thing through? Was the Bush Administration actually corrupt, morally corrupt—corruptible? Should it go from the Presidency in the White House, to jail? Over this kind of operation?

Because we have to do this. And the only way we can do it is by a credit system, where the Federal government, in cooperation with the states, creates a debt, which is used to finance large-scale infrastructure. This financing of large-scale infrastructure then becomes a driver, for restoring the local communities. Now a guy who used to work for the auto industry may wish he had not lost his job; but there are other jobs that he can perform in the same area, on the same floor space, using the same assistance or the same machine-tool technology, as making automobiles!

We don't need all these automobiles! We don't need to have somebody smoking into our lungs from the car in front—we don't need that! We need a clean, safe transportation system, of a type which enables us to go back and have family values, again. People should not be spending two hours each way, commuting five times a week. When in a former time, it was 15 minutes to half an hour.

We don't need to do that any more! We can go back, we can rebuild the economy! We can build a high-speed transit system, which means we can cut down most short-haul air traffic. We can locate industries, again, in a more decentralized way, which means we're distributing it more over the total territory of the United States. We do not encourage super-sized mass corporations; we promote medium-sized corporate structures, except when there's a very special reason for having a larger one. And we concentrate on technological progress, the increase of the productive powers of labor. We emphasize the importance of education for our population, for this kind of function. We rehabilitate our environment, which is now, going to pot.

And this kind of thing, if you amortized this capitalization, through the Federal government, over a period of respectively 25, 50, 100 years, as appropriate, we can do it! We can start with empty banks, virtually empty banks today—say, "Keep that local chartered bank in place! Federal bank, national bank, state bank, keep it in place. Keep the doors open! Even if it's totally bankrupt, we're going to rebuild it. The way we're going to rebuild it, we're going to create capital, in terms of long-term credit, for necessary projects and we're going to rebuild the financial capital base of those banks, in those communities. Because the community depends upon those banks, for all kinds of things, directly or indirectly." And we take that approach.

Now: Talking about the kind of figures you're talking about here, just think about what that means? It's this! We're going to have to put people back into things like the WPA operation. [You ask, true!] But we basically want productivity. And that's where we're going to have to go. But, it needs a commitment, and it requires a credit system! You can not do it under a monetary system. You can not do it on the basis of borrowing money from banks which are a bunch of thieves, anyway! And they don't have any worthwhile assets there, anyway.

We're going to have to cancel this bailout! We'll take an institution which is bankrupt, and it's gotten a bailout, and I would go into this thing with a Pecora-type Commission, and I think I can guarantee—we can prove, with a capable commission, we can prove, as fact; as with the Pecora Commission: These guys got to give the money back! We're going to take it away from them! Because we're going to prove, they shouldn't have gotten it! That they committed a fraud against the United States and the savings institutions, chartered banks. And we're going to put them into jail; and we're going to do other things. We're going to rebuild what these guys have destroyed, since September of 2007.

Take that period, 2007. And every bit of this, every swindle, whether a Barney Frank bailout, or something else, every swindle of that type, in the Congress or elsewhere—because it was evil! It was wrong! It was an injury to the United States! It was done out of greed! Out of corruption! And we'll prove that, with an honest replica of the Pecora Commission.

And there won't be a person in the United States that doesn't want to hang these guys, including probably the guys themselves: "You should hang me, I'm terrible." [laughs]

FREEMAN: Those of you who are listening to today's historic broadcast, we are in a position to take questions from the internet. We will entertain those questions in turn as time allows.

Lyn, the next question, once again, comes from some of the people who are involved in the Transition. And the question is: "Mr. LaRouche, I think we all agree, that we have to take steps to fix the problems of the banks and the financial institutions. But, the fact remains that to pull the economy out of its current slide, we need to give the real economy of work and wages a major boost. In other words, obviously, we've got to get job creation right. And the fact is, that I would contend," and the I who is speaking is a very prominent international economist; he says: "I would contend, that getting job creation right was something that FDR never did. It may sound like a strange thing to say. I mean, after all, we remember, and what we remember most from the 1930s, is the WPA, which at its peak employed millions of Americans, building roads, schools, and dams. But the New Deal's job creation program, while it certainly helped, was never big enough, or sustained enough, to end the Great Depression.

"When an economy is deeply depressed, as ours is, you have to put normal concerns about budget deficits aside. And President Roosevelt never managed to do that. As a result, he was very cautious, and the boost he gave the economy between '33 and '36 was enough to get unemployment down, but not back to pre-Depression levels, and in 1937, he let the deficit worriers get to him. And even though our economy was still very weak, he let himself be talked into slashing spending, while raising taxes.

"As you might remember, this led to a severe recession, that undid much of the progress the economy had made up to that point. It took the giant public works project, known as World War II, to shut up the penny-pinchers, and to bring the Depression to an end.

"It seems to me that the lesson from FDR's limited success on the unemployment front, is that you have to be incredibly bold, in your job creation plans. And what that means, is that you have to stop worrying about the Federal deficit. The fact is, that it is going to take hundreds of billions of dollars a year in government spending, to address our current problem. My estimate is that you would have to spend a minimum of $800 billion a year, simply in job creation, to achieve an economic recovery.

"Spending on this scale is going to produce some very scary numbers, vis-à-vis the deficit. But I would argue, that not doing it, is even more scary. My question to you, is, do you agree? And do you have any concerns regarding the Federal deficit, or do you think it's something that we should not worry about under current conditions?"

LAROUCHE: Mm-hmm! Well, the latter part of the remarks, I tend to agree with. You're talking about $800 billion to $1 trillion—that doesn't bother me at all. $2 trillion doesn't bother me at all. I think it's what's necessary. And over that kind of period of time indicated, yeah, sure! We're going to have to do it.

Now, but I think the error is, in certain assumptions, critical of Franklin Roosevelt. Your question really slid around that one. And it's a relevant one, today.

Remember: That on the day after Pearl Harbor, many organizations—right-wing organizations in the United States, which is what Roosevelt had to fear—hmm? And I'll go back to a little bit more history on this thing—which he had to fear, were his threat. Roosevelt was out to eliminate Adolf Hitler. Remember, that Hitler was actually given dictatorial powers, through the Reichstag Fire, days before Roosevelt was inaugurated as President, in March. But, who, inside the United States—Wall Street! the money powers—were full backers of Hitler? They had been full backers of Mussolini. The current President of the United States, as of today, is the grandson of the guy who made the action, which saved Hitler to become the Chancellor of Germany. And they were full Hitler supporters. Prescott Bush was a full Hitler supporter, even beyond Pearl Harbor. So was Harry Truman.

What happened is, this bunch of fascist bastards, like Prescott Bush, operating with the British, had gained control over the United States through the assassination of William McKinley, as President. And Teddy Roosevelt, the nephew of the head traitor—the head of the British intelligence service for the Confederate States, based in London, was the guy who trained Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt was a complete British agent. Taft was what he was; Taft was a traditional Ohio Republican. But Woodrow Wilson came from a family tradition of the Ku Klux Klan. Not only did he have the Ku Klux Klan tradition, but from the White House itself he organized the mass reorganization of the Ku Klux Klan, which was a pestilence in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s into the 1940s. I ran into this thing inside the military service back in my days, back in the 1940s. The Klan was a powerful force.

Now, what happened though, after Pearl Harbor. The same right-wing organizations, all Wall Street-centered, all London-centered, all British allies, which had been pro-fascist, pro-Hitler openly during that period, what did they do? They changed their address and mailing address and location. And they're the leading right-wing organizations, lobbying organizations in the United States, today.

Now what Roosevelt had to deal with is, remember, the United States' orientation had been, under Lincoln and after Lincoln, an orientation toward its chief allies abroad, major allies. Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany—Prussia, and then Germany. And it was the leadership of U.S. influence internationally, what became Bismarck's mobilization of Germany on the basis of reform, a pro-industrial and agricultural reform, which made Germany a great power. And Bismarck was dumped on orders from the Prince of Wales, and he was dumped in order to get World War I started. As he described it, as the intent to have a new Seven Years' War.

So the assassination of McKinley, which came from London, organized from London inside the United States, tied into right-wing British circles inside New York City itself. This was a change in policy from a U.S. policy which had been, since Lincoln, oriented toward cooperation with Germany, and Russia, under Alexander II and III. From the organization of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, the development of the great railway systems of Eurasia—they were all products of the United States' influence on these friends and allies in Europe.

What had happened is then we, by the assassination of McKinley, turned around and ran a witch-hunt against German immigrants into the United States during the period leading into World War I, and we became an ally of Britain against Europe. The right-wing influence represented by Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt before him, dominated as a pro-fascist organization—openly!— initially pro-Mussolini, and then pro-Hitler, organized that in Europe. That's what we fought against in World War II. That's the problem Roosevelt had in politics. A right-wing group that's still the same right-wing group today. These right-wing think-tanks; they're still the same fascist bastards they were then!

And that is a problem, and it was a problem for Roosevelt. Look, the United States knew, U.S. intelligence knew, Naval and military intelligence: up until 1936 the official policy was that Japan, as an ally of England, was going to conduct a destruction of the U.S. Naval forces in a planned war. Japan's target, assigned target from Britain, was to organize an attack upon Pearl Harbor, the Pearl Harbor Naval base. That was in the 1920s. Now, at a certain point, the British, for certain special reasons, particularly the invasion of France by Germany during World War II, decided that they had to defend their interests by going with the United States against Hitler, where they had proposed and supported Hitler before that, as an instrument for war against Russia, against the Soviet Union. So, they changed sides. With the Pearl Harbor attack, the right-wing in the United States scampered, because the British had deserted them on their intent here, but they simply changed their names and addresses. And the same factor centered in Wall Street, today as then, is the enemy we have to contend with, from within. This is the problem we have.

Now, Roosevelt was hampered. But, what did he do? And the idea of the short-term thing, that he turned around here and there, no, it's not true, not true at all. It wasn't Roosevelt alone that planned his policy; it was the U.S. military, the leading generals of the United States, leading admirals of the United States, who were prepared for this war with Britain, this war against Hitler. To defend the United States against the attack on Pearl Harbor planned. What did they do? Well, under Jack Pershing, "Black Jack" Pershing, others, we organized what became the Harry Hopkins operation during the 1930s. And Roosevelt was operating against, even though the Pecora Commission and so forth did their job, this crowd, this British crowd, which still controls U.S. politics today.

So yes, the fact is true, that Roosevelt was restrained, and was conditioned by threats from Wall Street and similar forces during the 1930s. But when he acted, he acted on the basis of plans that had been pioneered by the U.S. military, including Billy Mitchell during the 1920s, and on the basis of careful preparations for war mobilization before.

Now, if you look at this thing, not from the standpoint of jobs and so forth, usual kind of financial gossip, what happened was, and I saw it—being 86 years of age, I tended to see a few things some of you other guys missed; you weren't there when this was going on. We had a transformation in the productive powers of labor, and you can look at this in physical terms.

The difference between us and the Nazis—and the Germans had a much better military capability than we had. But, why did we win? Because, where they had hundreds of pounds of logistical support, we had tons. We were able to out-produce every nation in the world, per capita, in physical output of anyone. What happened to us, was Truman. Truman was on the other side. I was there. Truman destroyed our potential to convert the war-making potential into an postwar industrial potential. We went through a virtual depression into 1948, as a result of this shutdown of the potential productive capability the United States had acquired under Roosevelt and during World War II, this conversion. Roosevelt was committed to a postwar world in which the British Empire would be broken up, knowing that there is no United States until we get rid of the British Empire. There wasn't then, and there isn't today. You get rid of the British Empire, or you don't get a United States, ever again.

The problem is, we lost the ability, through Truman's treasonous betrayal, and Truman was part of the right-wing faction, and Truman's betrayal, we lost the ability to do what we should do. We still had moments of that in the 1950s under Eisenhower. It was reflected by President Kennedy's initiative on the space program, and on the industrialization program. But if you look at it, we were being ruined step by step throughout the postwar period.

And 1968, that fiscal year. You look at the figures, the physical figures; look at the aging figures and the physical figures. We went from a positive to a negative rate of growth in basic economic infrastructure at that point. And we lost our industrial potential in the same way. Now, what we lost were assets which had a 50-100-year range of asset value, and therefore it took time before the accumulation of the decadence in our industry and infrastructure caught up with us. But we have been degenerating every year, all year long, over the entire period from then to the present day.

What we've reached globally, as a result of policy, we've reached a global condition where the rate of hyperinflation in the so-called financial derivatives area, and the collapse in physical production and trade, in physical trade, has reached a point that the system is finished. We're finished; the world is finished. And yeah, what you said at the end—fine, it's true, and you're too modest. How about $2 trillion a year? That would be more sensible, more likely. And it would have to be a Roosevelt-type, what Roosevelt did—unleashed—in World War II, not in war, but in basic economic infrastructure development on a global scale.

And it's going to be big, so you have to regulate it. You just can't have the money out there as inflationary money; you have to control it. You control it under a credit system, you freeze it; a fixed-exchange-rate system, and you postpone the reconciliation of accounts according to a schedule. You have treaty agreements with other nations, where you have these exchanges, and you regulate this. And the smart thing you have to have in government is people who can do that job, who know how to do it. And I think in our records of our history, you'll find people in the diplomatic field and others, who in the past have understood how to do this. And we just simply have to call their skill and revive it, and use it again.

FREEMAN: Okay. This is another question from Transition on the question of jobs and infrastructure, and this one is likely to cause some excitement. The questioner says: "Mr. LaRouche, one of the biggest problems you're going to face as you try to rescue this economy, will be finding enough job creation projects that can be started quickly. Traditional WPA-type programs, spending on roads, government buildings like schools, ports, and other kinds of hard infrastructure are without question our most effective tool for creating employment and for creating wealth. But, America probably has less than $150 billion worth of such projects that are 'shovel ready' right now. And what I mean by that, is projects that we could actually start in six months or less.

"So, one of the things we are faced with is, we have to be creative. We have to find lots of other ways to push funds into this economy. Yes, as much as possible we want to spend on things of lasting value, things like roads and bridges; they make us a richer and a better nation. But there are other things that we are looking at: upgrading the infrastructure behind the internet; upgrading the electrical grid from the standpoint of computerization; improving information technology in the healthcare sector, which is a crucial part of any healthcare reform; as well as providing aid to state and local governments to prevent them from cutting investment spending at precisely the wrong moment.

"It seems to us that as we do this, all of this spending will do double duty. It serves the future, but it also helps the present by providing jobs and income to offset the slump. Obviously, some of the jobs that we're referring to, are in areas that are not traditionally defined as hard infrastructure, but they are, nevertheless, necessary and beneficial. In the past, you seem to have been very skeptical about the benefit of job creation in this area. Would you please comment on this?"

LAROUCHE: The problem is, when you start talking about these concerns in monetary terms, rather than physical scientific terms, you come up with mistakes, serious mistakes. The kind of jobs I have deprecated in the past are worthless jobs. They create nothing, no net benefit to the economy in terms of growth. Now, you want to get serious, then get serious. How many fourth generation nuclear power plants are willing to commit yourself to build? Now, you're going to do that by obvious methods of the type we used for production in World War II. Fourth-generation nuclear is it. If you're going to use a lower energy flux-density source of power, cut it out; you're wasting your time, you're babbling. The so-called "green" sources of power— crap! Solar energy as power—crap! You want to benefit from solar energy? Give it to the plants!

I mean, just take the case of this—how idiotic people are, who accept this "green" revolution nonsense. Take chlorophyll. Now, to describe it in simplistic terms, what does chlorophyll do? Chlorophyll is a molecule, which looks like a polliwog. It has a long tail, which is really a kind of antenna, and it has a head with a magnesium atom in the center of this head. Now what this thing does is, it takes sunlight—solar radiation—which is captured by tuning by this tail, and it's not actually an individual molecule, but it's a plaque of a whole group of these things, working together. It's not sexual, but they work together. And what happens is, this power comes in at a low energy flux-density, because when the sunlight hits the surface of the Earth, it's poor crap. You get a sunburn out of it, you can get sick, you can destroy the environment and create deserts, but it's lousy.

If you want anything good out of sunlight, grow a green plant. If you want to have a good effect, it's good to have grown grasses, it's good to have bushes—not George Bushes, but real bushes. It's very good to have advanced forms of tree life, because what happens is, when the green of the chlorophyll transforms the solar power, which is captured by the antenna and transforms it to an increase in energy flux-density; the equivalent of a higher temperature. It is this increase in energy flux-density which results in the normal process of cooling the environment, providing the conditions of life for growing vegetables and animal life, and so forth.

So, therefore, your measure of performance is not calories! Calories are things you wear, especially when you've gotten very fat. What you want is, you want higher energy flux-density. You want to go to a higher order of organization of living things. With solar energy, you produce deserts. With green, with trees, through chlorophyll, which transforms sunlight from a low energy flux-density, to a higher energy flux-density, the whole life cycle of the planet is generated.

Now, the problem is, that most of this so-called stuff that I have deprecated, I've deprecated for that reason. Do you want a desert? Then create a nation covered with solar reflectors. You will produce a desert. You will starve people to death. Stop this solar collector nonsense; it's insane! There are no green alternatives to nuclear power. None! If you don't want nuclear power, then get out and commit suicide now. Get it over with! You want to kill your neighbor? Kill nuclear power. It's the best way to do it; you don't even have to get your hands dirty. That's all it takes.

So the point is, it's the issue of creativity. And the problem with most economists and most economic institutions, they don't know what creativity is. They've never understood the science of creativity, from a physical science standpoint. And therefore, the secret of power, is called energy flux-density. The equivalent of higher temperatures. And you're talking about thousands of times greater power in nuclear power than in any other form of power, such as petroleum or natural gas, and so forth. And that's what you need.

Now, if you are increasing the productive powers of labor in this way, that's the way to go. And if you want to get this effect, give me the auto industry. Let me reorganize it. Let's produce a national rail maglev system. Get people off the highways and move them more efficiently. Cut out these short-haul flights, which are a waste of time, and dangerous. Build nuclear power plants, lots of them! And see how soon you've made a capital investment which will transform this economy. Think of ways of increasing green, and we have knowledge of who to do that. Improve the environment, improve water systems—desalination—improve water systems. Take the Western Desert, these large projects, take the American desert in the West, and save it; as in northern Mexico, too. You're going to change the environment, you're going to increase the productive powers of labor, the output per capita.

And it's creativity which is specific to human beings, as opposed to monkeys. How do you think a human being, who looks like a gorilla, or looks like a chimpanzee and sometimes acts like one, and how do you get a population of a few million individuals, in the case of these higher anthropoids, and how do you get a human population of six and a half billion people? Through creativity. The creative powers of the human mind, which most economists don't admit to exist—these, applied to development of society, increase the power of man per capita, per square kilometer, as expressed in growing things and these other things. All of this involves scientific and related progress, and it's capital intensity, in terms of science intensity, which is the secret of productivity. If you want to get people occupied, and assume that they do some good, because you employed them, that's nonsense. You have to think in terms of creativity. And you're going to find all these civilizations in the world, which were against technological and scientific progress, and look at them, we call them the undeveloped people, undeveloped nations, undeveloped territories.

The advantage of European civilization, and particularly in its development since Westphalia, has been that when we didn't have wars caused by the British Empire and similar things, human civilization—the power and quality of life of the human individual—has increased more greatly than ever before in all human existence. And every problem we've had has been something that distracted from that objective, or suppressed it. And there's nothing more deadly to humanity, than this green anti-nuclear, etc. technology. This is the most inhuman thing currently existing on the planet. Because it's the thing that stands in the way of the kind of investments we need and we could make, which would save humanity from the terrible crisis it faces today.

FREEMAN: Thank you, Lyn. Obviously, for all the individuals who had submitted questions dealing with green jobs, the issue of nuclear power, etc., I think that Mr. LaRouche did sufficiently answer them, contained in his answer to the last question, so I'm going to move on to one more question on the domestic package, and then we will entertain some of the questions that have come in on the issue of a Pecora Commission.

Lyn, this is a question, again, from Transition, and it's on the issue of spending, outside of spending for job creation. The questioner says: "Mr. LaRouche, one of the things that we have discussing at length here, is that you can do well by doing good, and let me explain what I mean by this. Americans who are hit hardest by the current economic crisis, are the long-term unemployed, families without health insurance, and people who generally are living below the poverty line. These are also the Americans who also most likely to spend any aid they receive, and thereby aid to them helps sustain the economy as a whole. Again, aid to the distressed—enhanced unemployment insurance, food stamps, health insurance subsidies—are something that it seems to us, must be done because it is the fair thing to do, but is also a desirable part of any short-term economic plan. We understand that it certainly is not enough to offset what right now is being identified as the most significant decline in private spending since the Second World War. One of the things that we are looking at, is that it also makes sense to cut taxes on a temporary basis. But the tax cuts we're talking about, are tax cuts that would go primarily to lower- and middle-income Americans. Again, both because it's the fair thing to do, but also because they are more likely to spend their so-called windfall than those more affluent. I want to be clear in asking this question. We know very, very well that tax cuts are not the tool of choice for fighting an economic slump, nor are things like enhanced unemployment [compensation], food stamps, etc.; they deliver a lot less bang for the buck, than infrastructure spending. And there is certainly is no guarantee that consumers will spend their tax cuts or their rebates, etc. We know that you have to spend more than $300 billion in this area to compare with spending of approximately $200 billion in what we would refer to as public works. However, we have been forced to address this, because any move to aid these distressed Americans, elicits a response—especially from Capitol Hill—and we should be clear that that response is from both Republicans and Democrats, that such measures are inflationary, and will cause more problems than they solve. It is our view that that outlook is really born more out of a refusal to accept the depth of the current crisis, and the suffering of the Americans than anything else. But we still wanted to address this question to you, because it is a real issue of how much we can and should spend to help people."

LAROUCHE: The problem is—you know, I'm an economist, and most of the people who are called economists really aren't. And therefore, I think differently than people who think in terms of spending money, or not spending money, or this or that. Really, that is not what counts. There are certain aspects of controlling expenditure, which are not expenditure. For example, when you take a public transportation system, rapid transit, public transportation system, municipal and so forth. It's better to have that virtually free. People shouldn't pay at all for it, so that it never enters the economy as a pass-through of choice of spending money.

For example, in New York City, when the transportation system was very cheap—a nickel a ride—it worked much better. And increasing the price of mass transit was crazy. It was demonstrated in the case of New York City. If you wanted to increase, improve the economy of the New York transit system, cut out the fares. In other words, the cost of maintaining the fare collection system was the factor which tilted the system in favor of losses. If you have a completely free system, where people just walk on, as to a sidewalk, and walk into a public transportation facility, rather than sidewalk, the economic benefit is great. Now, the same thing is true in health. Just take the case of the public health care now, the area of public health care. You know, we used to operate with general hospital systems, and look what happened in New York City with Felix Rohatyn, on hospitals. Which system is better? Is it better to have people going to hospitals where they're treated, period, first, and if there's any collection of fees, that comes second. Because your objective in public health is public health! You're fighting against disease. You're fighting for a healthy population. And if you have a good public health system, with general hospitals and so forth, and these kinds of institutions, you're able to deliver. It's better to spend money invisibly, not as money, but as a public system that's required.

Power systems. Let's take, for example, water systems. How much has the country lost by losing public free water systems? Or virtually free water systems. How much has it lost? How much do these crazy little plastic bottles cost you to drink this stuff! No, it's wrong. And besides, you want people to take more water. You want people who are old to take two to three liters of water a day. You make it an item [at a cost] and a poor person will cut down on drinking water. You may increase the problem of illness. That sort of thing. Public transportation. You don't want people driving automobiles all over the place. You ever get in a traffic jam, as a regular part of work? It's crazy! You don't want people jammed up. We used to have—in my youth, and young adulthood—a typical working person, factory, whatever, would take 15 minutes to a half an hour commuting, at most. Sometimes just by walking to work. And it was this kind of change, the centralization, decentralization and centralization process, which ruined this.

But this is not the issue. The real issue is, what is productivity? We went to a post-industrial society, which means we also went to an idea of globalization. So now, instead of getting food grown in your area, you have it imported from a great distance, at great cost. It's a high price, you can't afford it, and so forth. So, what we're doing in terms of our economic system, what has become customary—and as the questioner put it, when you describe the system in that way, you enter into a domain of insanity, but the insanity is the mass insanity which is built into the habits we have accepted over two to three generations, as a result of a wrong direction of the economy as a whole. Go back to the nuclear power question. Just think of producing 100 nuclear power plants a year, fourth generation, inside the United States. Now, we could do that. That can be done. We can provide high-grade jobs, not poor jobs, you can upgrade people constantly. If you do large-scale water systems, you increase the productivity of land area in production of product per capita per square kilometer, that's what you want.

So don't accept this idea that price, money—this is the answer. Don't think like an accountant! Send the accountant into retirement. Think like an economist, not like an accountant. Don't think about juggling payments and money and so forth. Forget it. This is a racket! It's because people believed in this system that they took, step-by-step, the wrong decisions, at the polls and so forth, and these wrong decisions have taken us down the ride towards the disasters being described. Don't try to learn how to live with disease. Cure it.

FREEMAN: Okay, we're going to move on to deal with some of the questions that have come in regarding Mr. LaRouche's endorsement of a new Pecora commission. Lyn, the first question is one that you're famliar with. We've discussed it before. The questioner thought it important to address it in a public forum. "Lyn, one of the things that we're faced with when we talk about a Pecora Commission-style investigation, is the difference in the way the system was structured back in the '30s, and the way that it is structured now. Specifically, because so much of the problem that we face is conducted outside the borders of the United States, my question to you is, can we conduct such an investigation without international cooperation? Specifically, we know that the City of London will resist such an investigation with every tool at their disposal. What about the Russians? Is there anything that would block them from enthusiastic endorsement of such a proposal, and if so, how should we here in the U.S. address this?"

LAROUCHE: You know, there's a principle in society called leadership. And often the term is misused and misunderstood. Society functions on the basis of leadership, and in the area I deal with, particularly with younger people in the area of creativity, I get the real question of leadership. To me, real leadership involves creativity, and I mean creativity in the sense of scientific creativity, which has many other reflections in Classical artistic composition. When you have people who have a populist culture of the type we have today, like the so-called popular entertainment culture, all these features, you are destroying the moral character and also the aptitudes of the population. What's happened with the Beatles—we have all become beetles, and you grow six pair of legs or something, and you become super-beetle. No, we've become degenerate.

Now, the problem here is twofold. First of all, many people out there, particularly people who have intellectual concerns, realize that this stinks, and they're a threshold away from saying so. But they look around at their friends and neighbors and the people they work with in general, and they say, "I don't want to say that, I don't want to get in trouble. I've got to keep my nose clean, I don't want to be in trouble." And there is a system of terror, in particular, which was built in with the right-wing turn in the post-Roosevelt period after World War II. This right-wing terror led to a kind of conformity. It's like a kind of H.G. Wells, or some other similar kind of conformity. And people lie all the time. They lie so much they don't know what a lie is anymore. They lie because they want to be accepted. They say things because they want to be influential. Not because of what they're saying. They don't think of the truth of what they're saying, the effect of what they're saying. They don't care! They want to be accepted. "Keep your nose clean, don't get in trouble. Shut up! Don't say that, you'll get into trouble."

So you have a population which is conditioned more than ever before in the United States population—more than before—to complete conformity, complete depravity. And this was essentially the, well, you know, "I don't believe in conspiracy theories!" You can't find your way across town without a conspiracy theory. People who don't believe in conspiracy theories should be put in tanks where they can swim around in the water supervised, and don't go any place. Then they don't have to conspire, they can just swim anywhere they want to and whatnot.

But we have people who are stupid, and they become more stupid because they don't use their brains. But, nonetheless, some of us—including some of my questioners today—think! And I encourage them to think. I think it's a noble practice, and people who think, who are problem solvers, not faddists who follow popular magazine tastes or something like that, who think, actually are able to influence people around them. And the problem we have today, in my experience, is that the people who are capable of thinking have been largely intimidated and corrupted into not actually applying this ability to think, as a function of leadership in society.

In other words, you bring up a subject. Everybody in the room will agree with what you're saying, but they don't want you to say it. And what you're not saying is exactly what you should be talking about in making a decision. And what you have is the case of someone who speaks up and says the unspeakable, which happens to be true. And people are suffering, and realize that what you're talking about pertains to the reason they're suffering, or that somebody else is suffering. And they respect leadership.

What is needed in society is that quality of leadership, of people who will stand up and think clearly, and propose changes. And you'll find when you get a group of people, a few people in a crowd, and a few people in a crowd who actually do thinking, can influence a large part of that number of people. And the problem today is that people are looking for acceptance, and they're trying to be overheard saying something they think will find gratification because it's not egregious. And therefore, the fear of being egregious is the greatest mother of stupidity in society today. And that's where the problem lies.

If we're willing to tell the truth, and willing to realize that leadership is the difference—and scientific creativity is the epitome of that, great scientific discoverers, and they are the leaders of society. They are the conscience of society.

And those who say, "Don't do it, don't upset, don't make enemies, don't rock the boat"—and what's needed now is boat-rockers. And people have to sit back, who are serious—and I think many of the questions here of course are serious—think back. Look, how much of this you're talking about is pure crap? How much of it is crap you're saying because you think it's expected of you by your peers, or what will be tolerated by people who you want to influence? Why not take a chance once in a while, and say what you believe to be true actually, not what you want to be overheard saying?

And I think a lot of the questioning comes from that direction. The questions come out about things that people have not been thinking about. Questions come up in the form of assuming that money is the magic of economy. They say money works this way, money works that way. But then I look around and I go into factories, and nobody is working. Money is all over the place, but no one's working.

So, the question here is one of creativity. Is the creativity there? Is the quality of leadership present, with people who have the guts to stand up? And that's our problem.

FREEMAN: I have again, on the question of the Pecora Commission, these are two questions—they're very similar, but came from slightly different sources. I'm going to read sections from both of them, because I'm not quite sure how to kind of mush them together. It's a bad word, but it was the best one I could come up with.

The first question: "Mr. LaRouche, I'm really more of an historian than an economist, but I've been asked to look at this and to make recommendations. And there are certain things about the Pecora Commission that really do stand out. One is that the original Pecora Commission not only documented a litany of abuses that had been committed by financiers, but it also paved the way for remedial legislation. Obviously, the Securities Act of 1933, Glass-Steagall, the Securities Exchange Act of '34, all were an outgrowth of what the Pecora Commission brought to light.

"Today, there are many who argue that the current calamitous meltdown of our system is a national calamity, but that it's a natural calamity, without any identifiable culprits, and they say to us, well, how important is it to identify those culprits? My view of this and my recommendation is that the nation really does have to be led, step by step, through all the machinations that led to the present debacle, and then and only then can we begin to shape wise legislation to prevent reoccurrence."

Now, we got a very similar question from Capitol Hill, again from someone who is looking very closely at this question, and that questioner says: "The original Pecora Commission exposed the way J.P. Morgan and others dominated the U.S. economy, and used it to suit their own goals. But above everything else, it built a constituency for FDR to do what he wanted to do, which was to force Congress to pass tough regulatory reform, the pillar of which was Glass-Steagall, etc. But, there was a very big difference between then and now. Then, people still believed that a strong agro-industrial base was the pillar of a strong economy. It seems to me, that to be effective, a new Pecora Commission, in addition to targetting the J.P. Morgans of today, has to address how our population abandoned the idea that a strong agro-industrial base was the equivalent, or was necessary for a strong economy. Wouldn't we have to also investigate how deregulation and probably globalization itself, the so-called free-market system, if you will, replaced the system that FDR relied upon to get us out of the last Depression?"

LaROUCHE: Aha! I didn't write the question, but I'm going to answer it. Yes, that's the problem. The objection, the qualification, is the problem. The conditions today are worse than they were then. The sanity of the population is less than it was then. The morality of the population is far less than it was then. Lower. And the question people have to confront is the idea that globalization and deregulation, that these conceptions are the disease. And to understand that more, that if we don't correct that disease, we are at the end of our existence as a nation and as a civilization. You have to give up your prejudice, or your life. You've got a choice. Because if you're going to go along with globalization and these other kinds of alternatives to work, to production, to skill, if you're going to do that, you're going to die, and you're going to die a horrible death, and you're going to take your society down with you.

Let's assume that there are some people who have the quality of leadership in society who will say, "I am determined to save society even against its own stupidity." Would you protect your children from jumping into a fire? And these guys are worse than children. Would you act to protect them, to keep them from destroying themselves, their families, their community and their nation? That's the question of morality. And if you pose that question in the sense of: "But, don't we have to consider this?" NO! We don't have to consider this, except as a crime. This kind of stuff is what has destroyed this society, and it's our toleration of this kind of crap, the acceptance of globalization, the acceptance of non-work as a form of work, eh? You know, trying to say isn't prostitution productive in some way or other? Oh yeah, only by accident.

That's the problem. And therefore, no, you have to go by productive values. And people who don't have productive values are of no use to society, in terms of political policy. The problem is that in society, far too many people—especially Wall Street types, who don't give a damn what they do for society, its effect, but they get the largest amount of money, the greatest amount of control in society. Look at the golden parachutes! You know, a parasite moves into a firm. In a short period of time, takes over the firm, leaves with a golden parachute, and leaves the people who have worked in that firm destitute. This is immoral!

And the way to deal with it is, you just say, "Hey you stupid jerk! How immoral can you get?" And you just have to take that attitude. You have to establish the question of what is the standard of acceptable behavior. And if your neighbor's not being acceptable, tell him so! If you're not willing to do that, you're not going to get a change. If you don't get a change, you're not get a society. Right now, you've got to the point—either you've got the guts to stand up against the so-called popular opinion that has these NEEEW VAAALUES, and say, "this is crap. It's you! You are the criminal! Yeah, that guy got $10 million for doing it. You got $5, he got $10,000. You're just as big a criminal as he is, just not as successful at it."

FREEMAN: These questions came in related to the issue of the Pecora Commission, but they also address some other questions, which came from all over the place. Number one, is the question of the illegal drug trade. The question of the relationship between the illegal drug trade and the financial system came up in the form of a question as to whether or not this should be a target of a Pecora Commission investigation. It also came up as a question from Russia, from Latin America—particularly, Mexico—and also here. Broadly, the question is: Without the cooperation of the international banking system to launder all of the money that comes from the drug trade, it would seem that the drug traffickers would essentially be drowned by the sheer amount of cash that they have to deal with. The question is: On the overall issue of the relationship between the illegal drug trade and the financial system, while I think many of us agree it should be thoroughly investigated, is this something that would come under a Pecora Commission investigation, or is it too big for that? Does it require a whole separate approach in terms of dealing with what has now become a gigantic problem for the entire world, and which is an alarming problem just south of the border, with Mexico?

LAROUCHE: Well, there's no difference between the two categories. None at all. The international drug trafficking operation is an integral part of the big-money-people operations in the world, the scandalous ones entirely. Take the case of George Soros, for example. How influential is George Soros politically in the United States? Isn't his very presence in the United States a crime, considering what he does? What about his influence on the elections in the United States? His influence on the Democratic Party leadership inside the United States? His influence on the members of the Congress of the United States? Is that not corruption? I mean this is beyond corruption. It's really Satanic!

Look at the conditions of life in Mexico. Look at the conditions of life in South America. Look at the conditions all over. For example, you have Southwest Asia. Drug trafficking. Now, what does the farmer get for an opium crop in a year? It's hundreds of dollars. What is it by the time the product of that reaches Europe or the United States? It's up to 10,000 times as much valuation, through the trafficking, as that. International drug trafficking is one of the biggest operations in the world, in financial operations. It's also the greatest cause of suffering in the world, in terms of the effects of this.

Now, in the case of Southwest Asia or Russia, this is a question of a strategic threat. When you take the relationship of George Soros into his operation in Russia, or Ukraine, or other areas, George Soros's drug trafficking is an existential threat to a major nation, to a major nuclear power. Look at South America. The only nation in South America presently which is seriously fighting drug trafficking is Colombia. And Colombia has the greatest experience with it.

We are having a threat to the United States from that, from the Mexican border into the United States, which is an existential threat to the United States, as well as to the nation of Mexico. So therefore, if that is not a crime for immediate consideration and action, as a case of corruption, then what is a crime? Drug trafficking is the most characteristic crime of the time. This is the one we should be the quickest to get rid of. If we don't get rid of this drug trafficking, we're not going to have a civilization. If we don't get rid of George Soros's influence, we're not going to have a civilization. I don't think there's much of a better, well, than the British interests, like his friend Malloch-Brown, doing what he's doing in Colombia. The worst murders, the worst crime on this planet, is being committed by these people.

If we don't consider that a crime, if that's not a motive for investigation, the very fact that somebody's involved with this kind of operation in administration and finance, with the amount of money that's involved, when you look at the effect of that in terms of the drug trafficking, the effect of that in communities, what more do you need as evidence for a Pecora-type investigation? We are being destroyed by the negligence in not dealing with this, and therefore we have to deal with it.

Freeman: The next question, Lyn, again, came in one form from one of the people who's working on the question of how to shape a Pecora Commission in terms of the targets that should be looked at, but a related question came from the Belarus Development Group in the Republic of Belarus. So I'm going to read the first one, and then the second one, and let you deal with them together, because they both deal with the question of the oil market.

The question from the U.S. says, "One of the things that we've been forced to confront here in the U.S. is the way in which the oil markets have been essentially rigged via the spot market. The bottom line in terms of what we are looking at is that you have a gigantic pool of U.S. dollars abroad, and this phenomenon of the petro-dollar market, has allowed the United States to be flooded with speculative money. Something that is of even greater concern, however, is that that money has also been able to exert a considerable amount of control over the status of the dollar itself. It seems to us that we have to find a way to address this and to remedy it, because our currency has become under current conditions something which is subject to attack."

Now, from Belarus, the question is different. From Belarus, the question is: "Mr. LaRouche, as I'm sure you know, the Persian Gulf countries recently agreed to introduce a common currency on January 2010. On that date, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait will introduce a common currency. Will this take the petroleum trade out of the U.S. dollar's sphere, and if so, what impact will that have on the U.S. and on the global economy as a whole?"

LaROUCHE: Well, take the second question first. In 1973, you had the spot market was a very small part of the total petroleum market. The long-term contracts were generally the determination of delivery of petroleum. Now, you had in sequence, in 1971, the breakup of the fixed-exchange-rate system under the initiative of Nixon. And then you had in 1973, you had the Saudis cut a deal with the British Empire, which was called the spot market run, of 1973 on. And what they did was they launched an agreement under which the British Empire and the Saudis would share a slush fund of vast magnitudes, based on the difference between the price of petroleum at port in the Gulf, and the price in the market associated with Anglo-Dutch Liberal Europe. So, this slush fund created the greatest strategic slush fund in the world, associated with things like BAE. And much of the terrorist operations of the world are funded through that operation. This became the combination, the destruction of the power of the U.S. dollar, as the system occurred then.

Now, we've come to the end of that cycle, in a sense. We're now on the verge of a total collapse of the entire international financial monetary system. And what is being proposed, which is largely a Saudi operation which is focussed on the trading coming through Dubai, which is the center of this, which is also a center of reference for international terrorism and things like that. This is a crucial part of the entire operation. And that's what you're dealing with. You're dealing with a swindle, of a monopoly—Well, first of all, we're starting with an anti-nuclear energy monopoly.

If we had not, in the same period, with the inauguration of Jimmy Carter, if we had not broken up the nuclear power development programs, which was done arbitrarily by the British and by the United States under British influence in that period—'75 on, '77—if that had not been done, you could not have had the development of the monopoly in petroleum then, because the obvious thing is, petroleum is a very cheap product at its source of extraction, especially from Saudi Arabia. And therefore, what makes it costly is two things—first of all, you transport it long distances, so you have a relatively heavy weight at a low price; you transport it at a high price, so the increment of cost is largely located in the transfer and transport of the product. It's stupid, when we had nuclear power plants coming along.

Now, if you get to a high-density nuclear power reactor, you now go to producing hydrogen-based fuels as a by-product of nuclear operations. When you go to a higher density—we're talking about an order of magnitude of a thousand, thousands—and you go to a higher-density power source, you no longer depend on petroleum being shipped from around the world, under these spot market controls. They're no longer fixed. The nuclear power plant is producing the hydrogen-based fuels which are used in any local area, and other things. Under these conditions, you would have national control—especially by industrial powers—of their own power resources. What you had, by shifting out to this other thing, you've now created a monopoly. And this became a transfer of the British Empire from the Anglo-Dutch Liberal financial system into the Anglo-Dutch-Saudi political system, which is also the center of international terrorism today. This was a product of this change.

Obviously, we break it up. And the way to break it up most efficiently is by going full tilt with nuclear power. And when you think about the factors of employment which large-scale advanced nuclear power stations represent, on a mass level, a transformation of the world physical economy on this basis, you solve the problem. And that's the way you have to go with this thing.

FREEMAN: We have time for two more questions: Lyn, this question is one that has been asked in different forms from literally every continent. The development movement in Russia asks the question in one way. People who are concerned with the current situation in the Middle East have asked the question in terms of how it relates to the situation right now and Israel's aggression, and it's also come up as a question relating to what is really behind the current Ukranian-Russian gas crisis, but essentially, the question is: "Mr. LaRouche, what is the danger, what is the likelihood, that those individuals and institutions, on a global level, which were incapable of keeping the world from plunging into economic chaos, will now instead unleash a hot war to stop the kinds of remedies to the economic chaos that clearly are now being considered? How worried should we be about departing shots of this Bush Administration, as part of that configuration?"

LAROUCHE: Ho-Ho. Ho-Ho-Ho. That's right! That's it! Now, are you willing to defeat them? The question is, are you willing to defeat these bastards? It's that simple. I know this myself. What is happening right now, I mean, Cheney is involved, say, in the Ukraine operation, with Soros. So you have two of the worst scum on the planet—Soros and Cheney—are involved in this operation. Cheney was involved, the head of this operation, I referred to before. In January of 2008, you had this plan, this alternative plan, for getting Israel to be deployed for an operation in the Gaza Strip. And it was more than the Gaza Strip. And it was going to happen after the November election in the U.S. It happened. Now the Israelis were already in on it in January, and everybody was primed. The British were running it, and it was done through Cheney. Cheney, who was essentially a British agent more than anything else, was key in this thing. In the Ukraine thing, again, George Soros! George Soros set up this operation. Then Cheney came in on the operation, to run an operation against Russia and against Europe, using the right wing in Ukraine, which is completed controlled by the London Soros crowd. That's the way it works.

Now, imagine what that means! If that were to go ahead, the danger is a general conflict, particularly under present conditions. And It's uncontrollable and unpredictable as to what will or will not happen. But you're talking about a threat of World War III and IV. That's the implication. Russia is a nuclear state. Its very existence is being imperilled by these operations, and the threat against Russia of a nuclear character is also there. Will they react? My tendency is to believe that they would act. You could be looking at World War III, nuclear World War III. And it's our job, and of those who are sensible, to crush this. Things like Gaza should never have happened. It should have been prevented, and force should have been brought to bear to make sure that it didn't happen! This didn't come by surprise. We knew about this in January of 2008. We knew it was on the table. We wrote about it. And nothing happened we didn't write about. It was known. It was a British operation. We didn't do anything about it. Then it happened. Now look what it means.

Look at what they're doing now in Ukraine. This was also targetted for the case of Iran. What do they do? They take the Gaza operation and some missiles, which are of Iranian manufacture, are being transferred to the area of Lebanon. Somebody grabs these missiles and then fires them at Gaza, the Gaza Strip area, in that area, against Israel. What are they trying to do? We didn't stop it! It was known! U.S. intelligence services were fully aware of this. Why didn't we stop it?! Don't you think this is Pecora Commission-type material? Why didn't we stop it? Why didn't the Administration stop it? We knew it was going to happen. We knew Cheney was involved. Why didn't we stop it? Who was it, Nancy Pelosi? Mrs. Blousy?

That's the questions that come up. Yes, we are, this kind of thing is unpredictable in the sense of what form it can take, but whatever form it will take ain't good, and it ain't good so bad that we have to do something about it. The first thing we have to do is to expose it, and we have to make it stink as it should, and rub it in people's nostrils. Otherwise, it's going to happen. Or something like it.

FREEMAN: Before I ask the last question, I should mention that certainly we have far more questions than time allowed us to entertain today. We also have especially from here in Washington a whole group of questions that people submitted but asked that Lyn not be asked publicly, until after President Obama has taken the Oath of Office. So that, I can promise you that everything that we took up here today will be addressed once again, probably in even more detail, when we come together again at 1 o'clock on Jan. 22. And I want to invite people to come back and to listen with us then, and to submit their questions then. I also think that, given the pace of events both domestically and internationally, there will be many other areas that Mr. LaRouche will be asked to address.

But in concluding today's event, this is a question that came from a group that really goes way beyond simply the Transition group, and really I think is better described as some of the senior members of what we would talk about as the institution of the Presidency. And they say, "Mr. LaRouche, as you know, for many of us, the President-elect was not necessarily our candidate of first choice. Nevertheless, as we've come together to shape the policy options of this new administration, we must say that we are optimistic, and we are optimistic even as each day seems to bring a new more escalated phase of the problems that we have to contend with. We're interested in knowing your view of this. Certainly you've contributed a great deal in terms of specifics and in terms of broad ideas, as we embark on the shaping of the policies that our nation so desperately requires, but when all is said and done, are you optimistic?"

I know the answer to that.

LAROUCHE: Well, I've been emphasizing for some time, and more so as this Presidency has been coming in, that we have to understand ourselves from a higher level than the usual press and related type of gossip, like the Sunday talk show gossip, that sort of nonsense.

The United States is unique. Very few people really understand history these days. One of the difficulties in discussing this kind of subject, because the dynamics of history are not things that people know, especially educated people. As a matter of fact, the more educated they are, the more they're educated against knowing this sort of thing. They're distracted by other concerns.

But the fact is that the Presidency of the United States is a product of a development in European civilization whose proximate root was the Council of Florence, in the mid-15th Century Council of Florence, and this conceived the idea of both the modern nation-state and modern physical science, both of which are ideas associated largely with the seminal work of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa. And despite the mobilization of religious warfare, in the attempt to prevent this from succeeding, we had in the 1620s, 1630s, we had in North America an acceptance of an idea which had been formulated by Nicholas of Cusa.

When Nicholas of Cusa saw what was happening with the Fall of Constantinople and the continuing wars in the Balkans, he recognized that the great transformation upward in science and in culture which had occurred at the Council of Florence, was now in jeopardy. That things were going to get worse. That old Europe, in its worst sense, was coming back to dominate the younger Europe of that time, modern Europe. And the religious war of 1492-1648 in Europe became a characteristic feature of this problem. But in this process, Cusa had in his writings towards the end of his life, had proposed that we recognize this corruption of Europe, and that we have to look across the oceans to other people, and form bonds with other people in other places across the oceans, in order to bring about a unification of humanity in the sense of modern nation-states united for a common cultural purpose.

You had a fellow in 1480, Christopher Columbus, who was a Genoese sea captain in the Portuguese service, and through a series of coincidences, Columbus in Portugal came across the correspondence of Nicholas of Cusa, and then wrote to Cusa, who had, by that time, died, and then wrote to leading associates of Cusa for scientific advice. As a result of this, Columbus adopted a commitment to sail across the Atlantic, to find the people on the other side of the Atlantic, and he had a map which was his guide. He, also, being a sailor in the North Atlantic service, knew something about ocean currents, and realized that you could foresee that land area on the other side of the Atlantic would be located in approximately a certain position. And so on the basis of this information, in 1492, he finally got the support to conduct this voyage and opened up the Americas for development of this type.

Now, there were several projects of this type; some came into the Hispanic areas, certain layers of Spain fleeing from the Inquisition for example, fled into South America, in the attempt to found republics in America, which would be an extention of Spanish culture, but would be of this type that Cusa was talking about.

Then, in 1620-1630, 1640, my ancestors finally arrived on the scene, in the Massachusetts area. And they found an idea of a republic, which came through the tradition of Henry VII in England, the same kind of thing, which became the birth of the idea of a culture, a nation, built in North America. In which the idea of New England was first established with this conception.

Now, in this process, with the rise of this corruption, represented by Paolo Sarpi, and the aftermath of the Council of Trent, Europe became more and more hopeless, even after 1648, even after the end of this religious warfare period. And so, Europe tended to degenerate. There was a brief renaissance period, post-1648, under Cardinal Mazarin and Jean-Baptiste Colbert, of which Leibniz was a part. But nonetheless, Louis XIV, this crowd, were corrupt and became tools of an Anglo-Dutch Liberal, actually Sarpian conspiracy, and began to degenerate.

So, we had founded, therefore, in that latter part of that 16th and 17th Century, you had in the United States, the development of the idea of a republic, which was to bring the greatest contributions of European culture into North America, in order to rescue a European civilization which was degenerating in Europe, and seemed to be determined to continue to degenerate.

So, we in the United States, though based around an English-speaking culture, we have common roots with the English culture, in general, as we find from time to time, as in the case of Shelley and Keats, for example. But! We are free, in our tendency, in this country, apart from Wall Street and similar kinds of things—we are free of the corruption, the oligarchical corruption, which is still characteristic of European culture today. And we represent, therefore, because to the degree we are willing to play that destiny out, to be the leading representative of the accomplishment of European civilization within the Americas, and to reach out around the world to establish what the Council of Florence had intended to accomplish with its great reform. To that degree, we represent something special. We are not an extension of the British, and so forth and so on.

But, because we were weak in numbers relative to the British Empire, from 1763 on, we have been in a constant war with the British, because the British became, at that point, an empire, in the worst sense of the term, and we were the point of resistance to that empire. But we found in ourselves, as centered especially in the British East India Company and centered in New York City finance around traitors like Aaron Burr, we found ourselves also dominated by a foreign influence among us, which is centered in London and in the Anglo-Dutch Liberal population.

Thus, today, we represent, those of us who share this tradition, who adopt it and share it, we represent a sacred trust for all humanity, continued from the proposition of Cusa, to reach out around the world, to make ties with people of other cultures, to form a union of sovereign nation-states on this planet, which shall be the only power controlling this planet, as a community of respectively sovereign nation-states, of which we ourselves must be an example.

Thus, when we look at the Presidency of the United States, we're not talking about a head of state, we're not talking about one of these things. We're talking about something much more profound, much more sacred: that we represent, through our institutions, we represent the embodiment of something which is necessary for the sake of all humanity.

So therefore, when we elect a President, if he's not a bum like the most recent one, or worse, or Andrew Jackson, another pig, contrary to some fables. He's a bad Democrat. You know, we have bad banks, we have bad Democrats, too.

So we represent something sacred. So this institution of our Presidency, Which is our system. It's not a parliament plus the Executive, no! The Presidency is our government, not the Congress! The Congress is an appendage. It's a control mechanism which determines the character of our Presidency, our Presidential system. But what's our Presidential system? What's the Presidency? It's an individual—but that's not the Presidency. It's an individual entrusted with a post in the Presidency, but how does this individual function in that post? It functions on the basis of all kinds of people and advice, institutions—institutions of government, institutions outside of government, or people like me as individuals who come to play a part in respect to the policies of our government. And we form a community—that doesn't mean that we always agree with each other, by no means. But we form a community as a process, as the Presidency of the United States. This Presidency of the United States is a living institution in its own right. It's not the Presidency of this guy or that guy. It's an institution of our nation. It's the characteristic institution of our nation, and it's most immediately represented by those who have experience and trust, and who are voices within the community of people, former officials and so forth, who shape the thinking of the Presidency as an institution.

Now, we come to another case. We have an individual, Barack Obama, President-elect—if they don't shoot him between now and Tuesday! And the Presidency with Barack Obama has now come into existence. It's now a Presidency. It's not Barack as President. It's the Presidency, under Barack Obama as President. And all of the factors in the Presidency converge, as a deliberative process, to try to steer this nation through, for the realization of the purpose of its having come into being in the first place.

And therefore, my concern is that Barack Obama recognize the institution, the character of the institution which has been bestowed upon him, and respond to this institution in the terms that I've just described. It's not his decision, it's not his reaction. It's his responsibility to be an agent in that office for what must be done by that office, and what we do to help make that. I don't know if he'll make the right decision, the initial decisions on Tuesday. I have no idea. He may not have had the experience, he may not have gotten the judgment, he may not have gotten the seasoning which yet shows him what his mission has to be. He may make a great number of mistakes, and that's important, but that's not the issue. The issue is: Is the Presidency of the United States going to function with him as President, as it should? And pray that he will.

FREEMAN: I know that all of you who are listening join me in thanking Lyn for his input, not only today, but over the course of the last months, in particular. And I know that his input will continue to be critical as we find our way through this crisis. So ends today's historic broadcast. And I assume that we will see all of you again next week, 1 pm Jan. 22, for the next in this series of historic interventions. Thank you.