March 30—A chain reaction has commenced within the world's present "globalist" monetary system, which will inexorably lead to a near-term, Krakatoa-style explosion, unless emergency measures are adopted.

The prospect of the crash is now discussed openly even in the establishment media. Its flashing red warning signs include: ,the staggering U.S. current account and

budget deficits, which require an influx of US$5 billion per day to finance; the speculation driven soaring prices of raw materials, most notably oil, now over US$56 a barrel; the accelerating slide of the U.S. dollar; the March 16th downgrading to near junk bond status of the bonds of the world's largest industrial firm, the U.S.'s

General Motors (GM) automaker, which is on the verge of bankruptcy; and the Britain and Australia, among other countries, which will pop as interest rates continue to rise.

All of these factors are interconnected. If the dollar continues to crash, then the Asian countries which hold U.S. Treasury bonds worth almost $1 trillion will have to sell them to avoid huge losses. But, if they sell them, the dollar slide becomes a rout. On the other hand, if the U.S. raises interest rates to keep foreign funds flowing into the U.S. (ie. into the dollar), its multi-trillion dollar mortgage bubble will pop.

GM and its finance arm, GMAC, between them have $300 billion in debt—more than most developing sector countries—and GM will never recover under conditions of soaring petrol prices and rising interest rates; its demise will take much of the U.S. and Europe's industrial capacity down housing bubbles dominating the U.S., with it, causing a huge tax revenue hole, which means the U.S. government will have to sell more bonds to finance an ever-growing budget deficit. And so it goes: down, down, down.

Thus, even former PM Paul Keating, surveying the huge dollar holdings of the Chinese and Japanese central banks, under conditions in which the U.S. dollar continues to fall, recently proclaimed: "What we have to keep our eye out for [is] a catastrophic fall in the U.S. dollar and a panic about the imbalances...", i.e. a new Great Depression.

Only one man in the world has warned for decades of the inevitable crack-up of the present globalist monetary system established in 1971: the American physical economist Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. In August of that year, under pressure from Wall St. and the City of London, U.S. President Richard Nixon took the dollar off gold, ending the postwar Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system. Just as LaRouche uniquely forecast the present crash, only he has proposed the pathway out: the return to a Bretton Woods-style fixed exchange rate system, in which masses of long-term, low-interest government credit are poured into large-scale infrastructure projects, to serve as the driver for recovery. The Anglo- American financial oligarchy proposes instead to unleash endless wars à la Iraq, and to establish a fascist world order under the guise of "fighting terrorism", in order to maintain control under conditions of collapse. We must dump the globalist system of looting and genocide, and return to the order of perfectly sovereign nation states under the principle of "the advantage of the other", as established in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia.

Historic Debate in Italian Parliament on New Bretton Woods

On March 14, the Italian House of Representatives opened debate on the Parliamentary Motion on the reform of the international financial and monetary system, drafted by Rep. Mario Lettieri, in collaboration with LaRouche representative Paolo Raimondi, chairman of the Italian "Solidarietà" movement. In the first phase of the debate, [which is still continuing], representatives Lettieri, Paola Mariani and Sandro Delmastro delle Vedove all spoke to support the proposal. Deputy Chairman of the House Publio Fiori, who had already years ago endorsed Lyndon LaRouche's New Bretton Woods proposal, chaired the discussion.

Rep. Lettieri read the text of the motion, recalling the original purpose of the historic Bretton Woods agreement, as pursued by US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Today, "an important economist and Democratic politician, Lyndon LaRouche," Lettieri said, "has promoted an international campaign, called 'For a new Bretton Woods: the alternative to the global financial crash— Large-scale Eurasian infrastructure projects.' A new Bretton Woods must therefore strive for a system that restarts development of the real economy of nations, and therefore reduces, especially, the delays in developing countries. To this end, the credit system is essential; it must supply long-term credit at low interest rates, to promote large-scale projects, infrastructure networks and productive investment for research, education and health care."

After reporting in detail on the exponential growth of the financial economy as measured against the real economy, Lettieri—a member of the centre-left opposition "Margherita" party—emphasised the danger of a systemic crash, due to the gigantic derivatives bubble in which banks and hedge funds are involved. "The fact that a sovereign state such as Argentina registered situation of bankruptcy says a lot about what is happening. How many other countries run this risk?" asked Lettieri. "So, a new Bretton Woods should act to reorganize the entire system based on bankruptcy reorganization rules, in order to favour productive activities over speculative ones. This should include the introduction of rules regarding financial movements and controls on trade flows," he said.

"At the time of Bretton Woods we were emerging from a war; today we have the duty to carry out, with just as much determination, another war: a war on poverty and misery, present in so many parts of the world, especially on the African continent and in Asia," Lettieri said. This is not an ideological issue, but an issue unifying majority and opposition, beyond the party lines, Lettieri said, calling for bipartisan approach in the debate. "We cannot lose time," he concluded, "to avoid a systemic risk that could provoke a crisis even worse than the 1929-33 one."

Rep. Paola Mariani, from the opposition party Democratici di Sinistra (DS), intervened focusing on the responsibility of the IMF in the systemic crisis and in the various "local" crises such as the Argentine bankruptcy. Quoting at length Joseph Stieglitz, former chief economist at the World Bank, Rep. Mariani supported the Lettieri motion, stating: "The time has come to build a new financial architecture that protects the real economy, and therefore an international conference similar to the conference that took place in 1944 in Bretton Woods."

At the end of the first debate session, Rep. Sandro Delmastro delle Vedove, from the government party Alleanza Nazionale (AN) stressed that this is "the most important issue in absolute terms" to be debated today. He exposed the "deafening, cowardly silence" of the news media on the issue. Recalling that the financial economy is in the hands "of a few hundred men who have not been elected by anyone and who elevated speculation to a system," the AN representative supported the proposal for "a new Bretton Woods, as we hear more and more often." Motivating his support, he stated that "the situation is on the verge of a collapse. In particular, the US crisis is most serious, independent from who is at the White House—Democrat or Republican—and his efforts to cover it up. The US deficit is literally frightening, and puts America in a situation in which she has lost power on the financial system." "There is the unpleasant feeling of being on the deck of the Titanic," he concluded, calling for "a return to a productive economy," to be achieved through "new rules that allow the development of the real economy."