LaRouche Responds: Some Disoriented Chatter from Asia on How to Address the Financial Crisis

May 6 (LPAC)--Lyndon LaRouche took note of "disoriented chatter" coming from Asian circles in recent days, which displays a serious misunderstanding of the nature of the international crisis. These reactions do not understand the severity and nature of the current crisis, LaRouche noted, and end up promoting the idea that, since the dollar is going to go down, you have to get into other currencies or combinations of currencies now, and run away from the dollar.

"This is a London line," LaRouche emphasized, "which in effect , rhetoric aside, is the same as the recent proposal by Benn Steil, published in the CFR's Foreign Affairs , calling for a three-currency system."

An example of this was the discussion by Asian Finance Ministers at the Asian Development Bank meeting, of measures to pool some part of their huge dollar reserves, which total some $3.1 trillion, about 65% of total world reserves. Associated Press quoted Japanese Finance Minister Koji Omi saying that Asia should expand its "currency swaps" and other measures to support national currencies as necessary. "Pooling those funds in a multilateralization process would constitute a major step forward," Omi said May 4. "If there's one lesson we learned from '97, it is that you better stand on your own two feet and you better be able to help yourself before others help you,"

ADB Managing Director General Rajat Nag said. "I think there should be a mechanism by which countries of the region come to each other's help."