Schiller Institute on YouTube Schiller Institute on Facebook RSS

Home >

LaRouche's New Bretton Woods
Is at Top of the News in Russia

November 1, 2008

Lyndon LaRouche's statements appear regularly in 40 to 50 Russian-language websites and are appearing more frequently in the print media there. On October 30 the major dailies Komsomolskaya Pravda and Novaya Gazeta cited Lyndon LaRouche, and on Oct. 31,  an article appeared in the context of discussion about the upcoming  November 15 Group of 20 Heads of State meeting, which presented Helga Zepp LaRouche's call for action for a LaRouche New Bretton Woods.

On Oct. 17th, 2008, the Russian-language original of the article "The Crisis Leaps Across the Planet" by Prof. Stanislav Menshikov was published in the Moscow weekly Slovo. The author has over half a century of experience of observing and analyzing the world economy. As Russia's leading senior expert on the U.S. economy, Professor Menshikov explains to Russian readers how Lyndon LaRouche's forecasts of the current financial breakdown crisis have proved to be uniquely accurate.

In the October 3, 2008 issue of the leading Russian business daily Kommersant, CEO of Russian Railways (RZhD) Vladimir Yakunin was interviewed under the headline, "Liberal Capitalism Is Coming to an End in Russia." At the outset of his interview, Yakunin stated bluntly that none other than Lyndon LaRouche, the "American alternative economist," had warned him of the onrushing global financial breakdown crisis a long time ago.

Responding to Kommersant's question "When did you realize that there would be a financial crisis?", Mr. Yakunin replied, "A year and a half ago. I am not making this up. I remember my first conversation with the American alternative economist, Professor LaRouche. He is someone who uses quite powerful algorithms for evaluating the state of the economy and its prospects. And he said to me, "Vladimir, I can tell you with certainty, that the economic crisis is already taking place." He emphasized that the basis of the crisis is the transformation of the economy and, above all, finance, into a virtual economy and virtual finances. Out of the entire monetary circulation taking place in the world today, in his view, only about 15% of the paper money is backed by real value - industrial production, raw materials, etc. It seems to me that right now we are witnessing the accuracy of this formula. This summer, I have been discussing the topic of the crisis both with other economists, and with my friends in the government, so the crisis itself was not unexpected. But I am not a professional financier. If the crisis was visible and obvious to me, it should have been visible and obvious to the people who are running financial policy..."

Russian Economist Sergei Glazyev recently called for Russia to co-initiate a new financial architecture, and cited the lessons of the Duma hearings he chaired in 2001, which were keynoted by Lyndon LaRouche. In an interview Glazyev noted that Russia has already lost $30 billion because of holding its national reserves in the sinking dollar, and added, "If the leaders of the Central Bank and the government had listened to the recommendations from the Parliamentary hearings, which we held seven years ago, those losses could have been avoided."

Duma Testimony, 2001

Quoting the American economist Lyndon LaRouche on the global financial crisis has become de rigueur in the Russian media. Yesterday the major dailies Komsomolskaya Pravda and Novaya Gazeta cited LaRouche, one with a 15-year-old quotation and the other with an invented one, for the sole apparent purpose of lending credibility to their articles. During the past month, current interviews with LaRouche have appeared on state-owned television and the popular website Polyarnaya Zvezda. Forty to fifty Russian-language web sites daily are being updated with current or older statements by LaRouche.

Today the daily paper Vzglyad ("Viewpoint"), one of Russia's two most prominent economics dailies, brought forward LaRouche's ideas in an essential context: in their article about the meeting President Dmitri Medvedev held today on preparations for the November 15 Group of 20 nations summit on the worldwide financial crisis. After summarizing Medvedev's remarks, author Natalya Zhuravlyova noted that "Medvedev's ideas [about a new financial architecture] will obviously resonate in the world community." The main example provided in Vzglyad was Helga Zepp-LaRouche's appeal for a New Bretton Woods conference, which the paper presented with special emphasis on the attack on globalization and derivatives speculation, contained in the 2007 edition of that appeal.

"For many years," wrote Zhuravlyova, "the most authoritative specialists in macroeconomics and finance have been calling to modernize the Bretton-Woods monetary system. Last year, for example, Chairman of the Schiller Institute Helga Zepp-LaRouche came out with an appeal, designed to be circulated worldwide through the Internet and presented to the U.S. Congress and the Parliaments of various countries. The appeal said, 'The systemic crash of the world financial system is in full swing. ... [T]he house of cards of "creative financial instruments," as Alan Greenspan has dubbed various credit derivatives, has caved in. ... If countries can no longer finance their functions, societies threaten to sink into chaos. The model of so-called globalization is today totally bankrupt, just as the communist model was in 1989-91. ... In order to stop the intolerable suffering which an uncontrolled collapse of the world financial system threatens to unleash on the population, we, the undersigned, demand the immediate convoking of an emergency conference which must decide on a new global financial architecture.'"

Zhuravlyova concluded, "It's one thing for public figures, scientists and experts to come out with such appeals, but quite another if the President of a huge country takes on the burden of putting reformist ideas into action. ... It has turned out that, 64 years after Bretton Woods, Russia is becoming the center of the creation of a new world financial architecture."

Also drawing attention to LaRouche's record, and his authoritative proposals, is the mass circulation of Prof. Stanislav Menshikov's article "The Crisis Leaps Across the Planet," with its focus on LaRouche's unique forecasting accuracy, and a Russian translation of LaRouche's own "Free Trade vs. National Interest: The Economic Debates About Russia." To date, Menshikov's article has been posted on 20 Russian web sites, besides Slovo newspaper and the author's own site. The posting of these items on a popular economics forum, along with a link to the Russian voiceover of LaRouche's October 1 webcast "A Program for World Economic Recovery," attracted hundreds of new visitors to the LaRouche movement's Russian-language web site this week (www.larouchepub.com/russian).

In a first for the distribution of LaRouche's webcasts in Russian institutions, the July 22 speech "One Year Later -- But Still Not Too Late" was shown on October 21 to an audience of 30 students from two departments at the prestigious Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO). The lecturer who sponsored the webcast showing reports that the audience was shocked to hear an American, as supportive of Russia's national interests as LaRouche was in the webcast.

 

Related Links:  

New Bretton Woods Page

Helga Zepp-LaRouche Resolution: Make the Dream of the American Revolution Come True!

Double World Food Production, Stop Wars of Starvation! (HTML)    (PDF)

Send your statement of Support to: Schiller.FoodforPeace@Gmail.com