Updated March 8, 2020
By Helga Zepp-LaRouche, President of the Schiller Institute
Most health experts are now calling the coronavirus officially a pandemic, and only a few are avoiding this term in order not to rattle the markets and the investments in the “Pandemic Bonds”. It is also apparent that this pandemic will be the deathblow for the otherwise already bankrupt financial system, of which the largest stock market collapse since 2008, the unprecedented plunge in the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes, and the announcement of Boston Federal Reserve President Eric Rosengren to go for “helicopter money” are alarming and undeniable signals.
Instead of learning from China, which according to the WHO has set a new standard for dealing with such a crisis, most governments did not use the three months warning time they gained due to the efficient intervention by China to go into a crisis mode. It is shocking, but not surprising, how completely incapable the liberal establishment has shown itself to be of reflecting on the fact that it is their policies which are the cause of an unprecedented threat to the entire human civilization, and of drawing the conclusions to change their ways.
Already in 1974, Lyndon LaRouche set up an Ecological-Biological Holocaust Task Force, to investigate the effect of the policies of the IMF and the World Bank to slash food and energy consumption, as well as health expenditures in the developing countries—showing that this would lead to biological catastrophes, the emergence of old and new diseases and pandemics. In the following decades, LaRouche and his movement published many more warnings, as well as offering concrete development programs for all continents, the implementation of which would have prevented the present crisis from spinning out of control.
Sure, the so-called industrialized countries may somehow cope with the crisis, but at what price? Due to the privatization—i.e., profit-orientation—of the health sector, there are now far too few beds for ICU treatment. The Belgian critical care doctor and head of the national trade union of doctors, Dr. Philippe Devos, has just warned that this shortage will lead to the triage of old people for the sake of young ones, when the number of cases surpasses the number of available ICU facilities, which he expects will happen. Are we getting back to the slippery slope of ending “unworthy lives,” as condemned at the Nuremberg trials?
And what about the poor countries, which have not even the capacities for tests, let alone treatment? What about countries like Haiti, Nigeria, and Bangladesh? What about Iran, where the sanctions denying medical supplies are clearly already causing the loss of many lives, unnecessarily?
What about the locust infestations in African and Asian countries, a danger which has been known for many months, and where the ridiculously small required financial help of $76 million has not been given, so that now the danger is that the locust swarms develop into a full-fledged plague, threatening millions of people’s lives in a short period of time?
What about the barbaric scenes at the Turkish-Greek border, where police from both sides are using tear gas against refugees, where one side may “instrumentalize” these people who have absolutely nothing, but the other side is no less barbaric trying to keep the “outer borders of the EU” protected? Does the EU establishment really think they can build a new Limes Line around Europe, while Southwest Asia and Africa implode with a coronavirus pandemic, a locust plague, starvation, and desperation?
This establishment turned a blind eye to the interventionist wars by the Bush and Obama administrations, which were, after all, the main cause for the refugee crisis. They have had no interest in building infrastructure in Africa over the last decades, mainly because of their neo-Malthusian ideology. Have they, in reality, accepted the idea to let this pandemic and this locust plague run their “natural course”? Is this not fitting with the Green ideology, which preaches that having fewer people is good for the environment?
There is a solution for this existential crisis, but when the so-called “elites” are morally unfit to introduce the necessary reforms, we need a broad mobilization of the population, who must become “state citizens” (Staatsbürger). There has to be a broad, popular demand that the leading countries of the world—starting with the U.S., China, Russia, and India, supported by others—must implement urgently needed steps in the reorganization of the present financial system. The best way to accomplish that is to conduct an immediate emergency summit of President Trump, President Xi, President Putin, and Prime Minister Modi to initiate the following steps:
- There must be an immediate implementation of a global system of bank separation, modeled exactly on Roosevelt’s Glass-Steagall law of June 16, 1933. Under this system, the commercial banks must be put under state protection, and must be completely separated by a firewall from the speculative investment banks, which can no longer be allowed access to either the assets of the commercial banks, or the privilege of bail-outs through taxpayer money. The toxic paper of these banks, including outstanding derivatives contracts, have to be written off. Legitimate claims, which have to do with the real economy or the pensions and other assets of working people, are to be marked as valid in the new system. Some categories of demand for payments have to be frozen for the time being, to be evaluated in terms of their validity by state institutions.
- There must be the creation of a national bank in every country, in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton’s Bank of the United States or the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau in Germany after World War II, so that state credit for productive investments can supply the physical economy with the necessary funds. The issuance of these credits must be guided by the principles of high energy-flux density and an optimal increase of the productivity of the productive capacities and the powers of labor, through an emphasis on scientific and technological progress.
- Among the participating countries, a system of fixed parities must be established, and cooperation treaties must be established among sovereign states for the purpose of well-defined infrastructure and development projects. These treaties together represent factually a New Bretton Woods system as it was intended by Roosevelt, with the explicit intention to provide credit for the industrial development of the developing sector.
- The urgent increase in the productivity of the world economy to accommodate a world population of presently almost 8 billion people must be facilitated through an international crash program for the realization of thermonuclear fusion power and other advanced technologies, such as optical biophysics and life sciences, in order to find solutions for challenges such as the coronavirus; as well as international cooperation in space technology and travel, which can establish the necessary next higher economic platform for the world economy, as this has been developed by the economist Lyndon LaRouche.
The Belt and Road Initiative initiated by President Xi Jinping, which already has been joined by 157 countries, offers a concrete perspective to bring the urgently required industrial development to Southwest Asia and Africa. China has offered to cooperate with all countries on this planet in a win-win cooperation to extend the New Silk Road to Southwest Asia and Africa, and in this way provide a concrete development perspective, which is the only human way to solve the refugee crisis. The United States and all European nations must cooperate with this plan.
We, the signers, are making this urgent appeal to the governments mentioned, to act in this moment of an extraordinary challenge to the safety and existence of all of mankind, to correct the mistakes of the present system which led to this present crisis, and return to the principles of the common good, of sovereignty of the nation-state, and food and energy security, while we adopt a vision for the common aims of mankind and a community of the shared future of humanity.
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