LaRouchePAC Internationale Fredags-webcast, 15. juli 2016
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Jeg tror, det er almindelig kendt blandt absolut alle i det internationale finansielle samfund, og i alle regeringer og blandt alle relevante personer i politiske stillinger i den transatlantiske sektor, at det, jeg nu siger her, er absolut sandt. Med andre ord: bankiererne og de ansvarlige personer i det internationale finansielle system alle er klar over, at dette system er absolut bankerot; håbløst bankerot. Det står umiddelbart foran en nedsmeltning, i langt større skala end den, der fandt sted i 2008, af den meget simple grund, at alle de indikatorer, der var til stede, før Lehman Brothers og AIG gik ned, er til stede nu, men i langt større skala.
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Engelsk udskrift:
SAVE DEUTSCHE BANK TO FIND A SOLUTION THAT WILL SAVE MANKIND!
LaRouche PAC International Webcast Friday, July 15, 2016
MATTHEW OGDEN: Good evening! It's July 15th, 2016. My name
is Matthew Ogden, and you're joining us for our weekly webcast on
larouchepac.com. I'm joined in the studio tonight by Benjamin
Deniston; and we're joined by a very special guest, via video,
Mrs. Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Helga Zepp-LaRouche is the founder of
the Schiller Institute, and also Chairwoman of the German BüSo
(Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidaritä¤t, Civil Rights Movement
Solidarity) political party.
Helga LaRouche is joining us tonight to discuss the
initiative that she and Mr. Lyndon LaRouche have taken this week
to act in a very decisive manner to avert World War III and a
global economic blow-out. This concerns the situation that
Deutsche Bank now finds itself in.
I would like to begin by reading a Statement that Mrs.
LaRouche issued a few days ago, on July 12th of this week. We
will then follow that Statement by a discussion with Mrs.
LaRouche herself. In the Statement that Mrs. LaRouche issued,
titled "Deutsche Bank Must be Rescued, for the Sake of World
Peace," Helga wrote the following:
"The imminent threat of the bankruptcy of Deutsche Bank is
certainly not the only potential trigger for a new systemic
crisis of the trans-Atlantic banking system, which would be
orders of magnitude more deadly than the 2008 crisis, but it does
offer a unique lever to prevent a collapse into chaos.
"Behind the SOS launched by the chief economist of Deutsche
Bank, David Folkerts-Landau, for an EU program of EU¬150 billion
to recapitalize the banks, lurks the danger openly discussed in
international financial media, that the entire European banking
system is {de facto} insolvent, and is sitting on a mountain of
at least EU¬2 trillion of non-performing loans. Deutsche Bank is
the international bank, with a total of EU¬55 trillions of
outstanding derivative contracts and a leverage factor of 40:1,
even outdoes Lehman Brothers at the time of its collapse, and
therefore represents the most dangerous Achilles heel of the
system. Half of Deutsche Bank's balance sheet, which has
plummeted 48% in the past 12 months and is down to only 8% of its
peak value, is made up of Level-3 derivatives, i.e., derivatives
amounting to circa EU¬800 billion without a market valuation.
"It probably came as a surprise to many that Lyndon LaRouche
called today for Deutsche Bank to be saved through a one-time
increase in its capital base, because of the systemic
implications of its threatened bankruptcy. Neither the German
government with its GDP of EU¬4 trillion, nor the EU with a GDP
of EU¬18 trillion, would be able to control the domino effect of
a disorderly bankruptcy.
"The one-time capital injection, LaRouche explained, is only
an emergency measure which needs to be followed by an immediate
reorientation of the bank, back to its tradition which prevailed
until 1989 under the leadership of Alfred Herrhausen. To actually
oversee such an operation, a management committee must be set up
to verify the legitimacy and the implications of the obligations,
and finalize its work within a given timeframe. That committee
should also draw up a new business plan, based on Herrhausen's
banking philosophy and exclusively oriented to the interests of
the real economy of Germany.
"Alfred Herrhausen was the last actually creative, moral
industrial banker of Germany. He defended, among other things,
the cancellation of the unpayable debt of developing countries,
as well as the long-term credit financing of well-defined
development projects. In December 1989, he planned to present in
New York a plan for the industrialization of Poland, which was
consistent with the criteria used by the Kreditanstalt für
Wiederaufbau (KfW) for the post-1945 reconstruction of Germany,
and would have offered a completely different perspective than
the so-called 'reform policy,' or 'shock therapy', of Jeffrey
Sachs…."
Helga completes this Statement by saying:
"Herrhausen's assassination has gone unpunished. However,
there exists 'the dreaded might, that judges what is hid from
sight,' which is the subject of Friedrich Schiller's poem {Die
Kraniche des Ibykus}. The Erinyes have begun their dreadful
dance.
It is now incumbent upon all those who, in addition to the
family, have suffered from the assassination of Herrhausen, upon
the representatives of the Mittelstand, of the German economy and
the institutional representatives of the German population, to
honor his legacy and to seize the tremendous opportunity which is
now offered to save Germany."
With that said, Helga, would you like to follow up at all
with any opening statements?
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I think that it is absolutely
known to everybody in the international financial community and
to all governments and all relevant people in political positions
in the trans-Atlantic sector, that what I'm saying there is
absolutely true. In other words: the bankers and [those]
responsible for the international financial system all know that
this system is absolutely bankrupt, hopelessly bankrupt. It's
about to blow up in a much, much bigger way than 2008, for the
very simple reason that all indicators which were there before
Lehman Brothers and AIG went under, are there, but much more.
The famous instrument box which they were using, or
pretending to use, in 2008, has been used up: quantitative
easing, zero interest rate, negative interest rate, helicopter
money. Right now you have the situation — and we have this from
extremely reliable contacts in the banking community who agree
with us — where all the central banks are printing money, paper
money, like crazy, because they know perfectly well that
helicopter money is not just electronic, but if you would have a
banking run right now, the whole thing would evaporate within a
very short period of time, in hours.
This is a situation where if you have an uncontrolled,
chaotic collapse, which is right now eminently possible, because
you have several [inaud 0:07.39]. Not only Deutsche Bank.
You have the Italian Banking sector about to blow. You have the
British situation after the Brexit. The entire European banking
system is absolutely bankrupt. If you had an uncontrolled
collapse, well, as one banker told us, after he read this
statement of mine, he said, "If this is not remedied in the short
term, we are looking towards a Europe of chaos, disorder, and
revolution."
The biggest danger, apart from World War III directly, would
be a plunge of the trans-Atlantic sector into chaos. Therefore,
my husband — who has a unique record of being right, in terms of
forecasting, and being unique, in terms of coming up for
proposals how to remedy the situation — made this very
surprising comment: that Deutsche Bank, of all banks, should be
singled out, they should be saved, one last time, but not without
conditions: They must immediately be put in a sort of
receivership. A management commission should be in charge. And
then they need a new business plan, which must go back to the
philosophy of Alfred Herrhausen, who was the last moral banker in
all of Europe, and who had a completely different philosophy.
We had all kinds of reactions about that. It turned out the
banks are much more hated than meets the public eye. People said,
"Let these banks go bankrupt! Why don't you just close them down?
Nationalize them! Bankrupt them!" You had an outpouring of anger
coming from people you would not expect it — conservative
industrialists, politicians who normally are not speaking in
radical tones at all — but what came out was an explosion of
anger.
It is very easy to be angry about the situation. If this
thing collapses in an uncontrolled fashion, all the life-savings
of people will be ruined. The majority of the people will have to
pay, and this will be associated with poverty. Millions of people
dying. This is not a joke.
It's not enough to be "against" something; even if banks
have behaved completely criminal and immoral. Deutsche Bank is
spending right now such enormous amounts of money on legal fines
for illegal activity from LIBOR swindles, all kinds of shady
operations, so that they had to write down their profit warnings.
It's not the question of "doing a favor" to Deutsche Bank. Not at
all! The question is: you must find leverage; how to bring this
thing in order, before the whole thing ends up in a collapse,
causing an absolute uncontrollable situation.
That is why the reference to Alfred Herrhausen is really
extremely important, because he was the head of Deutsche Bank. He
was a banker. Deutsche Bank had a different policy, and
therefore, when you say, "We have to back to the philosophy of
Alfred Herrhausen," at least the older generation knows exactly
what that means. Therefore, I think we should really spread this
and force people to put pressure on the situation, that this is
being done. You have to "unwind" the outstanding derivatives. You
have to deal with the situation that Deutsche Bank has EU¬55
trillion in outstanding derivatives. Half of their balance sheet
is without market valuation, which means that it's practically
worth nothing, because you can't really sell it.
If you have an uncontrolled collapse, then that could be
really what brings down the whole thing in a chaotic way. If you
go the way Mr. LaRouche has proposed, then you can have an
orderly resolution of this bankrupt system, and replace it with
one which is in the interest of the people. So, it's not just a
technical proposal. Several people, in response to my statement,
said, "This is probably the very last chance we have to prevent a
catastrophe."
OGDEN: I would like to get a little bit more into the
significance of the role played by Alfred Herrhausen in a moment;
but before we get to that, Helga, maybe you also say a little bit
more about what the strategic context of this intervention is,
especially from the standpoint of the role that [inaud 13:06]
play, not only as the only viable economy in Europe right now,
but also the emphasis that Mr. LaRouche has placed on the
relationship between Germany and Russia, being the only means by
which we can prevent the outbreak of a thermonuclear conflict.
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, people have now all kinds of proposals,
like "Tobin Tax," "tax the speculators" — all these proposals
are floating around. What they don't consider, is that when we're
taking about banking, we're not talking about money or financial
questions; we're taking about the physical pre-condition for a
society to exist. Fortunately, the German economy, despite all of
these paradigm shifts which have occurred in the last 25 years to
the worse, the German economy is still an economic powerhouse.
You still have a very large concentration of very productive
middle-level industry. Middle-level industry is normally where
all the patterns are made, the technological innovation occurs.
That is really the backbone of the productive economy.
The question is: this German economy, without which all of
Europe would not function, absolutely must be protected, and not
only be protected, because right now, it is already many, many
small firms which are in danger. There are other factors, like
the crazy [nuclear] energy exit of Mrs. Merkel, which has
increased the price of energy tremendously, but the German
economy is sort of weakened; but it is still the absolute crucial
factor because in Germany you have a lot of the industrial
potential which is needed not only for all of Europe, but in
order to get the whole question of Eurasian cooperation on a
sound ground, you need the German economy. The whole question of
the German-Russian cooperation, German-Chinese cooperation in the
development of the Eurasian Silk Road, is absolutely crucial.
So, the question is the productivity. And what has happened
with the paradigm shift of all the successors of Herrhausen — I
don't want to name all of them — but all of them went into this
high-risk maximization of profit no matter what. Ackermann wanted
25% profit, preferably every month; and they went into these
completely crazy derivative operations, so that Deutsche Bank is
today {the} leading bank in terms of derivative exposure. With
$55 trillion in outstanding derivatives, that's with a GDP of the
German economy of $4 trillion a year; it's more than 10 times
more, even 12 times more the GDP of the German economy. So
Deutsche Bank long has stopped to be Deutsche Bank; it's now
operating from London, from New York. It has become one of the
most aggressive investment banks in the world. But if it goes
bankrupt, which it could at any moment; and that's why the chief
economist Mr. Folkerts-Landau put out every day since Sunday, he
put out an urgent call saying this recapitalization of the
European banks must occur, or else calamity will happen. If
Deutsche Bank would go under, the German economy — and with it,
all European economies — would collapse; and therefore, it's not
a question of choice. Obviously, to just put out more bail-out
packages per se, as the ECB [European Central Bank] and the EU
Commission have done in the past, is completely useless because
it makes the problem worse. Right now, it has reached the limit;
because after helicopter money, what else do you want to do?
It is not a choice; it is a life and death question, not
only for Germany, but really for the entire trans-Atlantic
sector.
OGDEN: Now, you have emphasized that the circumstances
around the assassination of Alfred Herrhausen continue to be a
crime that the truth has not yet been told fully about. It's
something that in the United States, we can relate to the
assassination of John F. Kennedy, in terms of the magnitude of
what this meant for the turning point in the policy of Germany at
that time. Obviously, it was in the context of the collapse of
the Berlin Wall in the beginning of November 1989, and just less
than one month later, at the very end of November, November 30th,
Herrhausen was assassinated in a very sophisticated attack on his
convoy as he was travelling from his home to the Deutsche Bank
headquarters. You said, Helga, in an article that you wrote in
1992 titled, "New Evidence Emerges in the Herrhausen
Assassination Case," you said, "The key to the motive behind
Herrhausen's assassination lies in 11 pages of a speech he was to
deliver in the United States only four days after he was
ambushed. The speech contained Herrhausen's vision of a new kind
of relationship between eastern and western Europe, which would
have fundamentally altered the world's future course." And then
you have a quotation from the speech, which I think is shocking
when we go back and read that today, in consideration of what Mr.
LaRouche and you were also both advocating for at that time. What
he said, or what he was to say, in that speech that was never
delivered, was the following:
"There should be assurances that the new credit will flow
into specific, promising projects. It is therefore advisable that
the export guarantees which the German Federal government wants
to expand, be tied primarily to specific projects. In this
connection, at this year's annual meeting of the IMF and World
Bank in Washington, I proposed setting up a development bank on
the spot; i.e., in Warsaw. Its task would be to bundle the aid
and to channel it according to strict efficiency criteria. My
vision is that such an institution could function somewhat like
the Deutsche Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, which traces its
origins back to the Marshall Plan."
So, when you compare that speech that Herrhausen was about
to give four days after he was assassinated, to what Lyn said in
his speech in West Germany at the Kempinski Hotel in 1988, when
he forecast the reunification of Germany and the collapse of the
Berlin Wall, he said:
"Let us say that the United States and western Europe will
cooperate to accomplish the successful rebuilding of the economy
of Poland. There will be interference in the political system of
government, but only a kind of Marshall Plan aid to rebuild
Poland's industry and agriculture. If Germany agrees to this, let
a process aimed at the reunification of the economies of Germany
begin; and let this be the {puntum saliens} for western
cooperation in assisting in the rebuilding of the economy of
Poland."
So, I think in the context of this speech that Herrhausen
was about to deliver in New York, his cooperation with Helmut
Kohl in terms of the reunification of Germany; and also the fact
that he was on record calling for the debt relief — at least a
partial debt relief, if not a full debt forgiveness of the Third
World countries. He had met with the President of Mexico in 1987;
he had surprised the world by delivering a speech at the World
Bank in 1987 calling for the forgiveness of the debt of the Third
World. All of these are right in parallel with what you and Lyn
were advocating for, going all the way back to 1975, back to the
Operation Juarez and also with this Marshall Plan Productive
Triangle proposal at the fall of the Berlin Wall. So, I think
that certainly puts his assassination in the correct context to
understand {qui bono}. Who benefitted from the fact that he was
killed?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I think I would to take it a little bit
back, because this is not just a question of a murder which
occurred 27 years ago. I want to recall what the period was,
because most people have forgotten that Germany was not always
unified; that the Berlin Wall came down. But this was one of the
most traumatic developments in the post-war period. You remember
that you had the peaceful demonstrations in the G.D.R. [East
Germany], the Monday demonstrations; the Warsaw Pact still
existed, and it was not clear what would happen. Would this lead
to another 1956 like in Hungary, or a new Prague Spring, where
Russian or Soviet tanks come? Then the wall came down, and Mr.
LaRouche had this idea about the German unification which you
referenced, which he presented in the Kempinski Hotel in 1988; so
we had a plan. We put out immediately this proposal for the
German unification, to have a mission; to have the Productive
Triangle to take the region from Paris, Berlin, Vienna — the
economic powerhouse of the world at that time — and develop
corridors into eastern Europe to transform Europe. We were the
only ones who had any idea, because we were the only ones who
even had an inkling that the Soviet Union would collapse; which
Mr. LaRouche had already pronosed in 1984. He said, if the Soviet
Union sticks to their military policy of the Ogarkov plan, which
was basically the idea to gain world dominance; then they will
collapse in five years. And I can assure you, not even the German
government had any idea that unification would be real; even if
that was the primary political goal of the entire post-war
period. Then the Wall came down; and in the official documents
which the German government published ten years later, they
admitted they had no contingency plan for the case of German
unification. Can you imagine that? That was the policy goal
number one to have German unification; and they had no plan. But
we did have a plan.
So, then developments became extremely traumatic. On the
28th of November, Helmut Kohl did probably the most important
step in his entire political career by putting forward the
10-point program. This was not yet a program for German
unification, but it was a medium-term plan for the moving closer
together of the two German states; the West German and East
German states in a federation. But he did that without consulting
the Allies, and he did it without even consulting the liberal
coalition partner, Mr. Genscher; but it was a first baby step in
the direction of two German sovereignties. We know now that
Francois Mitterand put an ultimatum to Kohl and said, either you
give up the German D-mark and its being replaced by a European
common currency — what became the euro — or we will not agree
to German unification.
Two days after Kohl had put out this 10-point program,
Herrhausen was assassinated. Everybody in the German elite at
that point — and we talked to many people at that time — said
this is not just an assassination, but since Herrhausen was the
closest advisor to Kohl, this was a message to Kohl. Don't stick
your head out; do not dare to pursue and assert sovereignty.
Because Germany in the entire post-war period was an occupied
country; and at that time the saying went, "The best-kept public
secret of NATO is that Germany is an occupied country and will
remain an occupied country." So by Kohl making this tiny baby
step in the direction of sovereignty with the 10-point program,
that obviously was the contributing factor why this assassination
occurred. As you said, if Herrhausen would have made this speech
in New York in the following week, you would have had a proposal
coming from the leading banker which was practically in principle
identical to what Mr. LaRouche and I proposed at the time;
namely, that the unified Germany should take Poland as an example
for the economic transformation of all the other countries of the
Comecon.
Then naturally, everything went haywire. The following EU
summit in the beginning of December in Strasburg, everybody
started to attack Kohl; and in an interview later, he said these
were the darkest hours of his life. The circumstances were such
that despite the fact that Kohl knew that the euro would not
function, he said this is against German interests; and he knew
absolutely that you cannot have a European common currency
without political union. So, he knew it wouldn't function; he
knew it was against German interests. But he was forced by the
circumstances to accept it, because you had Bush, Sr. who had the
policy of containment of Germany in the EU. It is well
established that originally Bush was against the German
unification; and only because such more experienced political
advisors like Brent Scowcroft told him if you are now against
German unification, then the United States will lose all
influence in Europe, so we have to basically agree to it. But
let's make sure Germany gets contained. And that is what led to
the infamous EU Maastricht agreement, which was the beginning of
turning the EU into an imperial adjunct of the Anglo-American
system. Helmut Schmidt, the late German Chancellor, in an equally
surprising interview recently before he died, said the whole
Ukraine crisis, which is right now what could be the trigger
point for a war with Russia; really started at the Maastricht
agreement, because this is when the EU decided to do exactly what
NATO has been doing ever since. Namely, to go for an eastward
expansion and move the EU and NATO just up to the borders of
Russia.
So, the decision which was made in these really traumatic
weeks and month, set the course; and if Herrhausen had been alive
and advised Kohl, these conceptions could have been implemented
and history would not be at the point where we are now. So, the
Herrhausen assassination not only meant the lost chance of 1989;
everybody agreed at that time this was an historic chance that
happens at best once a century. I called the star hour of
Germany, because if you had the unified Germany developing a
peace plan for the 21st Century together with Russia, the whole
world would look completely different. But as I said, all the
successes of Herrhausen went in the direction of high-risk
speculation, globalization, money for money's sake, the rich
become richer, the poor become poorer, and all the problems we
have today. All the problems we have today are not just caused by
this one assassination, but the assassination is symptomatic for
the paradigm shift to the worse.
It's a murder which is unpunished; the so-called murderers,
the third generation of the Red Army Faction probably never
existed. There was even in the first German TV channel a
documentary which said there has never been any evidence that any
of the persons who supposedly were the murderers, ever really
existed. So, the {qui bono} — well, it's the financial oligarchy
which profited; and it really has the smell of something quite
different — of an intelligence operation — as many of the
leading figures who did not fit the Yalta norm were assassinated.
But with the Herrhausen case, as you said, for Germany this is as
important in terms of paradigm shift as the assassination was of
John F. Kennedy.
And right now, when the entire banking system is absolutely
at the verge of collapse, it is the last moment to do justice and
really go back to the policies of Herrhausen. Even so, almost
nobody knows anymore what real industrial banking is, because
they are so money-greedy and absolutely suckers for the latest
profit, that it would be a real uphill battle. But that battle
must be fought if Europe and Germany and the rest of the
trans-Atlantic sector are to survive; and probably beyond that,
much of the world.
BEN DENISTON: Well, I think just looking at this transition
period, I know that you and Mr. LaRouche had both made a warning
that I think is very appropriate just to state in this context.
That around the fall of the Wall, this lost chance of '89, you
had explicitly said to the world, if we attempt this bankrupt,
collapsing Soviet system with an equally bankrupt trans-Atlantic
system, you're going to head to a collapse that's worse than
what's happening now. I'm paraphrasing you; you might know more
exactly how you stated it. But it seems like that really bridges
this whole process from '89 to what we're seeing today as the
culmination, the expression of what you warned of at that time. I
think a challenge we have is to get across the importance of
acting now on the level needed to make this shift we're talking
about. What Lyn has laid out with this reform program for
Deutsche Bank is the beginning out of this new paradigm. I think
it's important to see it as an intervention in this whole
collapse process you both had warned about and forecast this
would be the consequence of failing to act then. That should give
us greater impetus to know how important it is to act now while
we still have the chance.
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I remember that at that time, you had the
problem of the Bush administration, Margaret Thatcher, Francois
Mitterand, who absolutely really ganged up to prevent Germany
from assuming any such role of having an independent policy;
especially in respect to Russia. They were always saying, "Oh,
the West has won over communism." The only other person outside
of us who totally contradicted them was John Paul II, the Pope of
the time; who said, the people who now are triumphant and say the
market economy is winning over communism, are absolutely wrong.
If you don't believe it, look at the condition of the Third
World, to see that the West has not won; because the moral
condition of the developing countries speaks to the contrary.
Naturally, that is all the more true today; because if you
look at the inhuman treatment of the refugee crisis, for example.
They are still coming by the hundreds, every week by the
thousands, over the Mediterranean; drowning. Even more are
starving and dying of thirst and lack of water trying to cross
the Sahara. That is also the condition of this system. The system
is what causes all of this; and therefore, it is absolutely high
time that we come to the question of how can we — as a human
civilization — give us an economy and a financial system which
is adequate to human beings? And I think it's very important that
we go back to the question of what is actually the creation of
wealth? Is it what Margaret Thatcher said, is it the ability to
buy cheap and sell expensive? The famous speaking of Margaret
Thatcher being the daughter of a grocery trader, or is it the
possession of raw materials? Or is it the control of the
financial system? No; it's not. The only source of wealth is the
creative power of the human being; and when that creative power
is applied, then you have scientific and technological progress.
That is then leading to an increase of productivity in the
economy.
That has been the battle between the American Revolution and
the British Empire; between the free-traders and people like
Alexander Hamilton who insisted that it is the creative power of
labor which causes the well-being and the living standard and the
longevity of the people. That was the philosophy of Friedrich
List, the great German economist, who is now the most famous
economist in China, by the way. That was the policy of Friedrich
List and Henry C. Carey, the advisor of Lincoln; who both advised
and through such people as Wilhelm von Kardoff, who was the
head of the German industrial association in the time of
Bismarck. Who changed the mind of Bismarck from being a
free-trader into being an absolute believer in a protectionist
system and the idea that you have to further the productivity and
creativity of your own population as the only source of wealth.
So, there is a lot of history involved; and what we are
really talking about is taking Germany back to the ideas of
Bismarck, of Friedrich List, of Henry C. Carey, of Dr. William
Lautenbach, who in 1932 presented a plan to the Friedrich List
Organization in Germany which was identical with what Roosevelt
had proposed with the New Deal and the Reconstruction Finance
Corporation, Glass-Steagall, Bretton Woods. That was all in these
proposals by Dr. William Lautenbach, who as history knows,
unfortunately were not taken up; but instead you had Hjalmar
Schacht, you had Hitler, you had before Mussolini, Franco,
Petain, and you are in bed with fascists.
The question today is, can we, in time, go back to those
conceptions which have proven to be productive and valuable for
the economy; or are we plunging into a catastrophe of new fascism
and new wars? So, on this question of Deutsche Bank, most people
are so in the day-to-day making money, profits, and balance
sheets, and having dollar notes coming out of their eyes, that
they have forgotten that there is something much more important
about human life. And that is the happiness of people; the common
good of people.
The reason why in this call to honor the memory of
Herrhausen, using this crisis of Deutsche Bank now as a real
paradigm shift to go back to these policies; why I mentioned the
great poem by Friedrich Schiller "The Cranes of Ibykus." And by
the way, I would really urge our audience right now, who probably
are not familiar with that poem, we have at translation which we
can put on the website so it's easily accessible. But this poem
is so powerful; it's written by Friedrich Schiller. It discusses
not only the murder of the beloved poet Ibykus, but more
importantly even, it discusses the power of nemesis; the power of
natural law, which is a power which works in reality. It's not
that God punishes every little thief who steals something
immediately by chopping off his hand; but it is a power which
revenges great injustice. And this poem discusses this in a very
beautiful way by resorting to the Greek nemesis, this idea which
was used in great Greek dramas to demonstrate this principle of
the Erinyes. That there is this power that revenges this murder
and other injustices; that there is a higher power than the
arbitrariness of people's will. The poem is very, very powerful.
As a matter of fact, I would even urge you to learn German, just
to read and understand that poem; because it teaches something
about history. I think right now the Erinyes, those goddesses of
revenge which Friedrich Schiller has in this poem marching in the
amphitheater — in circles — they are bringing forward this
higher power by the prism of the poem. It's a very, very powerful
way of reminding people that there is a higher power than what
people think when they read the daily newspaper. So, please make
the effort. Read it; in English if you have to, but read it in
German because there is another dimension to history than what
people think. And only if you bring this forward this inner
strength, this inner power which people have almost lost in the
trans-Atlantic sector because people small. They feel impotent,
they feel helpless. But what we have to unleash is exactly this
inner strength so that people really become truly human again,
and take the history and the destiny in their own hands. And
that's exactly what the message is of Friedrich Schiller; who
always thought that man is greater than his destiny by resorting
to these kinds of inner powers and higher authorities than the
laws of money.
OGDEN: Well, you cited the Ibykus principle in your keynote
speech to the conference that you hosted three weeks ago in
Berlin; this extraordinary conference. But I thought in that
context also, you made it very clear that history is working
according to a higher law. That conference came just days after
the Brexit vote which shocked everybody and threw all of Europe
in disarray. But you said, this is the Erinyes principle in
action. Tony Blair lied to get us into the Iraq War. The Iraq War
set off a series of regime-change operations in the Middle East
that have completely destabilized this region. That has, in turn,
created this refugee crisis; and now you have the Brexit and the
disintegration of Europe as the Erinyes beginning their dreadful
dance, as you said in this statement once again.
I think that's also highly relevant in the context of the
anticipated news today, where people have read in the press that
the 28 pages, which we have fought for years to force the release
of these 28 pages; the reports are in the press that these very
well could be released today. In what form, we don't know; how
heavily redacted, we don't know. But again, this is the Erinyes
acting, and it's our responsibility to understand this as a
principle of history; and to continue to understand that the
moral arc of the Universe may be long, but it does bend toward
justice. I think Martin Luther King also understood what
Friedrich Schiller was getting at in this poem, as you said.
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I think that having said that, I want to
come back to the absolute need to find a handle; because right
now the problem is, nobody has a handle on how to intervene with
this financial crisis. And if the proposal of Mr. LaRouche is
taken seriously, you have a way of dealing with the consequences
of avoiding the dangers of an uncontrollable collapse. You have
to untangle this; you have to shut down this derivative system;
you have to shut down the bubble. You have to do it in an orderly
manner, because there's no point to just say let's just close it
down or tax it or whatever. You have to find a skilled level of
how you take management of a bank — in this case, the Deutsche
Bank; you have to put in a supervisory management commission
which has to evaluate the validity and integrity of the
outstanding obligations. Many of the derivatives have much more
than two parties; they have two, three, four, and more parties.
You have to untangle that. You probably have to write down the
nominal value of these outstanding obligations. That way, you can
put a new basis, a new business plan for the bank which is in
cohesion with the idea of credit policy in general. But you have
to start to do that somewhere. The Herrhausen history and
tradition is exactly what makes it very practical. We are not
proposing something completely outlandish, utopian; this was the
policy of Deutsche Bank at one point.
So therefore, I want to bring it back to this point; and I
would really urge all the people who are watching to make sure
this proposal is being distributed to all institutions which have
anything to do with the economy, with industry, with people in
political positions who should take care of the common good. And
make sure that we get a serious debate. I know that in both
election platforms of the Democratic Party and the Republican
Party, you have the Glass-Steagall law in the platform. Now that
is very good; we will have the conventions in the next weeks.
This is not necessarily the stated position of the candidates;
but it is in the platform. So there is hope that if we mobilize
in the right way, this change can occur before it's too late. But
it's really one second, or maybe a nanosecond before midnight; so
it's not a time for complacency. It's a time for action.
Therefore, I would really urge you to join us; because we have a
beautiful future ahead of us if we do the right thing. If we miss
this moment, it can be the end of civilization; because the war
danger is very real, not only in respect to NATO against Russia,
but also the escalation around the South China Sea. We are not in
a political void, but we are in one of these moments in history
where a lot depends on the individual courage and the individual
action. Therefore, I really ask you to join us to bring history
in a better direction.
DENISTON: Absolutely.
OGDEN: Thank you very much for joining us today, Helga. This
was a special broadcast, and I think a very important and timely
one for the American audience. We're going to make the statement
that you wrote on this subject — which I read from in the
beginning of the broadcast — available in the video description
to this video and also on the website. This is absolutely one of
the key pieces of material that people can use to, as you said,
to do outreach to all the key layers in the United States and
elsewhere to put this proposal very seriously on the table. We
will also make the English translation of "The Cranes of Ibykus"
available to our audience as well.
Would you like to make any final remarks before we close, or
is that a good place to conclude our broadcast?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I just would like to really express my hope
that enough people recognize that we have now a point where
history will be either totally a catastrophe — and most people
are already thinking that; the people who are not completely dead
because of drugs or other problems, they know that we are in a
really unprecedented civilizational crisis. Even worse than any
of the prewar situations of the 20th Century. Just yesterday, one
of the key advisors of the Kremlin said, all the signs are of a
prewar period; and that's true. We are in a prewar period; and
unless we remove the real reason for the dynamic for war, which
is the danger of a collapse of the trans-Atlantic financial
system. Unless we remedy that, I'm almost certain that war will
happen; and if that war would happen, it's the logic of war that
in that case all weapons available will be used. In the case of
thermonuclear weapons, that would be it; there probably would not
anybody to even record what happened, because it would be the
elimination of civilization. And therefore, the remedy of the
financial crisis is not just a banking technical affair; it
really is the question of putting society back on a course where
we all can survive as a human civilization. In a certain sense,
it's what {The Federalist Papers} discussed. Can we give
ourselves a political order which is suitable for man to organize
his own affairs and govern according to the common good? So, it's
a much larger issue; and I'm very optimistic that it can be done.
But it requires an extraordinary effort, and it requires all of
you.
OGDEN: OK, thank you very much for joining us today, Helga.
Hopefully, we can do this at some point again in the future.
Thank you all for tuning in. Please stay tuned to
larouchepac.com; and take this discussion and take what Mrs.
LaRouche just had to say very much to heart. So, thank you very
much and good night.