Emergency Action on Deutsche Bank Only Way To Save Europe and the World

Even while fools such as Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Scheuble insist that both the Italian banks and Germany’s largest bank, Deutsche Bank, are in no serious trouble, David Folkerts-Landau, the chief economist of Deutsche Bank, has expanded on his earlier warning that the entire EU banking system is on the brink of collapse. He blamed it largely on European Central Bank president Mario Draghi’s QE — buying ailing bonds without limits — and reducing interest rates into negative territory. “Europe is seriously ill,” he said in an interview with Die Welt, adding that urgent treatment was required, particularly measures that spark economic growth again, because without growth, the banking crisis cannot be overcome.

Folkers-Landau said that the living standards across Europe are severely threatened, and that this is a major reason for the rapid rise of anti-EU sentiment across Europe.

Lyndon LaRouche has intervened directly into this crisis, pointing to the actual cause of the unfolding disaster — the assassination of Deutsche Bank Chairman Alfred Herrhausen in 1989, whom LaRouche identified as the last German banker who understood the necessary role of banks in fostering credit for the real economy. Since his assassination, Deutsche Bank and German banking generally have been taken over by the British, both literally in the sense that the British now own Deutsche Bank, and in terms of shifting to speculation rather than productive investment.

See: Zepp-LaRouche: Deutsche Bank Must Be Rescued, for the Sake of World Peace!

The economies of most nations in the trans-Atlantic region are implicitly bankrupt, LaRouche said in a discussion Wednesday with his Policy Committee. But the German economy has within it the means to save the European economies, and beyond, due to the historic German dedication to investments into science and technology. If Deutsche Bank were to collapse, he warned, the result would be not only European-wide economic breakdown, but war — global war.

While a recapitalization of Deutsche Bank is therefore urgent, it must not be a matter of money per se, but a reorganization of its vast, largely worthless derivative exposure and non-performing loans and a return to productive investment, as envisioned by Herrhausen. The German economy could then provide the margin required to bring the European economy back to the creation of real profit.

The danger of war could not be more apparent than it is today. One of Putin’s top advisors, Sergey Karaganov, told Der Spiegel today that the extensive NATO deployment of forces to the Russian border, as further implemented at the Warsaw NATO Summit last week, is a military provocation, saying that “If NATO initiates an encroachment — against a nuclear power like ourselves — it will be punished.”

At the same time, China’s Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai Tuesday responded to the multiple military threats to China since Obama’s “pivot to Asia” and the U.S. intervention against China’s sovereignty in the South China Sea, saying: “Sending these carriers and bombers is a manifestation of the law ‘might makes right’. Therefore China has to oppose and reject it. This is in the true spirit of international law. And if it happens to us, it could happen to anyone.”

There are no partial measures to deal with the existential economic and strategic crisis now confronting mankind. There must be a creative solution based on new principles, resting on the understanding that every human being has the creative potential to contribute to the common aims of mankind. An end to geopolitics, to the beastial philosophy of “one against all,” between individuals and between nations, is urgent, possible and necessary.