Lyndon LaRouche's Take on Neoliberalism's End

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 3/28/2008 01:39:00 AM
Conspiracy theorists of all stripes will welcome this latest work from the acolytes of Lyndon LaRouche. The man has "run" for the US presidency continuously without any apparent success. In some ways, his jail time is more memorable to many than his forgettable electoral exploits. Nevertheless, while LaRouche has decided to sit out the 2008 campaign, his Executive Intelligence Review is still putting out all sorts of, ah, interesting stories. This sample purporting "The End of the Line of the Anglo-Dutch System" makes for entertaining if not quite accurate reading. It is beyond me how a drastically weakened Britain at the end of WWII set out to "systematically the American economy" by undermining the Bretton Woods system. Wouldn't such a weakened country have a similarly degraded bargaining position? Nor is it explained why the British Bretton Woods delegation led by John Maynard Keynes of all people would be more keen on "neoliberal" principles than his American counterpart, Harry Dexter White. Ah, but why quibble about historical accuracy when you can do creative writing? In any event, it makes for an interesting contrast to the Financial Times writers' thoughts, to say the least:

During July 1944, a United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference was held at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. The 44-nation conference established what became known as the Bretton Woods monetary system, a key component of which was the establishment of a fixed system of currency exchange rates among nations. Under Bretton Woods, a gold reserve standard was established, with the U.S. dollar pegged to gold at $35 an ounce. This arrangement was the economic bedrock upon which the post-World War II world was rebuilt, led by the industrial might of the United States.

Bretton Woods was a victory for President Franklin Roosevelt, and his view that the post-war world should be free of empires and their colonies. FDR intended to use the power of the United States and other nations to elevate the status of the common man worldwide, and end the domination of the economic royalists. It was a grand vision, and had he lived to implement it, the world would be in far better shape than it is today.

The British were apoplectic at the prospect of a Rooseveltian/American System world, and pulled out all the stops to defeat it. With the death of Roosevelt in 1945, and the ascension of Harry Truman, the empire struck back. The fear of a Soviet attack and the spread of communism was used to create a Cold War environment, under which the British empire became the top strategic ally of the United States, and FDR's grand vision was swept away. In the name of fighting communism, Truman and his Anglophile controllers sold FDR and America down the river. (The parallels to today's "war on terror" should not be missed.)

The British set out to systematically dismantle the American economy, as a way of restoring their own dominance in the world. They had to move slowly, because the memory of FDR and what he had done for the nation was fresh in people's minds, as were the abuses of the economic royalists he had fought, and because the American people would fight back if they understood what was planned.

One of the biggest obstacles to their plan was the Bretton Woods system, and the stability it provided to the U.S. and the global economy. For the British plan to succeed, Bretton Woods would have to be eliminated...

As the speculative bubble came to dominate the U.S. and world economies, feeding it became paramount. Among other things, this led to a sharp run-up in real estate values, to provide "wealth" which could be turned into mortgage debt, and then into a wild assortment of securities to be used, with lots of leverage, to play in the derivatives markets. To keep the mortgage-debt flowing, as prices rose into the stratosphere, the bankers repeatedly loosened the requirements for home loans. This process, which was driven by the banks and the derivatives market, ultimately exploded. This was falsely portrayed as a "subprime" crisis, but in reality it was the death throes of the financial system itself...

It has taken 37 years for the process set into motion by Richard Nixon in 1971 to destroy the global economy. During that entire period, LaRouche and his international political movement have been a consistent voice for reason, organizing in the streets and in the halls of government for a return to the sound economic policy of the American System, and an end to Anglo-Dutch Liberalism.

We have now reached the point where all of us must decide: Do we go back to what works, or do we descend into fascism and chaos, and a new Dark Age? That is the question we ask you to keep in mind, as you read the following reports.