From a Speculative Economy to a Productive Economy: The LaRouche Alternative
The American economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche was vilified by the media and leading government officials for calling out the insanity of their policies, which today have led us to the point where we are walking on a tightrope between general thermonuclear war between nations, and a global collapse of the financial system. Today, Lyndon LaRouche’s warnings could not be any more prophetic: The Iran War has been an utter strategic failure for the United States, which did not achieve its goal of regime change and has depleted its stockpile of weapons. The attempt to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, using Ukraine as the sacrificial lamb to force Russia to its knees, has failed, and has led to a situation of utmost tension.
How did we get to this situation, and why was Lyndon LaRouche, and the forces he assembled, so unique in his understanding of why we are presently driving off the cliff? On August 15, 1971, exactly 55 years ago, a decision was made by President Richard Nixon to take the dollar of the gold-reserve standard, effectively ending the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates. The importance of this decision was not a technical matter of currencies, as LaRouche properly understood, but the transition from a physical economy—based on physical production and advanced technologies—to a speculative system where sovereign governments no longer direct the economy. The result of physical economic reality being ignored has been the driving dynamic of the strategic crisis, resulting in worsening economic conditions for the vast majority of people in the United States, and an inability to wage geopolitical wars, increasing the likelihood of nuclear escalation.
Lyndon LaRouche not only forecast this outcome, but proscribed alternative policies to be immediately implemented. The United States, in collaboration with other nations, should unleash high-tech industrialization, and great development projects in the world, such as the Oasis Plan for Southwest Asia, the Bioceanic Rail Corridor in Ibero America, and an international crash program for the employment of thermonuclear fusion for energy. The financial system should be reorganized, LaRouche said, to employ credit in these areas of development.
Other nations have begun taking this approach. The nation of China has emphasized that there is a harmony between nations based on common economic development. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an economic model which the United States could join—as it should have done in 2013 when first announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping—instead of treating China as an adversary.
In today’s Manhattan Town Hall, TLO Spokesman Harley Schlanger returns, and will go through the history of the 1971 decision to take the dollar of the gold-reserve standard, along with how the United States can reverse itself from being the center of an imperial system. He will also discuss his recent visit to China, and some of the discussions he had with officials there.