The abject failure of the free trade system of globalisation, which has caused a worldwide food shortage, housing crises in many western countries, and an international banking system collapse, has triggered a global revolt away from free trade, with many nations recognising the urgent need for a new world monetary system.

A group of seven former European heads of state, five former finance ministers, and two former presidents of the European Commission, including former EU Commission head Jacques Delors, former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard, and former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, have gone public with an open letter to the EU Presidency and the EU Commission, which warns that the systemic collapse of the global financial system—a collapse which had been foreseen by “farsighted individuals”—brings with it the threat of unprecedented poverty, the proliferation of “failed states”, migration of entire populations, and further military conflicts.

The financial world, they argue, has accumulated a massive amount of “fictitious capital”, with very little improvement for humanity. Among the immediate countermeasures they propose, is creation of a European Crisis Committee, and the convening of a world financial conference to “reconsider” the current international system and the globalised world order.

This is an echo of the ten-year call by the American statesman and economist Lyndon LaRouche for a conference to replace globalisation with a New Bretton Woods monetary and financial system.

It is also anathema to the British financial interests whose imperial power is based on keeping nations subjugated by free trade: Ambrose Evans Pritchard of the Daily Telegraph, the mouthpiece for those interests, attacked the European call as “a grave threat to the City of London”.

The call is a particularly well-timed intervention in the raging worldwide debate about the World Trade Organisation, which is trying to force nations to accept more free trade, in order to bring its current “Doha Round” to a conclusion. The WTO is suffering enormous collateral damage as nations across the globe begin adopting protectionist measures, in breach of WTO policy, in order to ensure food security. The WTO was described in a 2002 book by UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, as a “fearsome machine in the service of pirates.” He reveals how the WTO actually acts on behalf of a mere few hundred of the world’s most powerful corporations.

The battle between the interest of such corporations and the interests of the people and their respective nations is coming to a head. Join the LaRouche movement’s international campaign to double world food production, save our family farms and defend our sovereignty now!

For more information, see “The End of Free Trade: Revolt Begins Against British Policy”, by Helga Zepp-LaRouche.