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.

Tuesday’s edition of the London Guardian writes that the new report issued by the U.S. House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) on July 11 said that direct British government interventions prevented HSBC from being charged with money-laundering by the Obama administration in 2012. The report said the British government “played a significant role in ultimately persuading the DOJ not to prosecute HSBC.” Instead of pursuing a prosecution for crimes including terrorist aid and drug money laundering, the bank agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion fine.

The HFSC report charges that British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne (who holds the same post to this day) and a British banking regulator warned of “global financial disaster” if HSBC were prosecuted.

The report published letters and emails from Osborne and Financial Services Authority (FSA) officials to their U.S. counterparts, warning that launching criminal action against HSBC in 2012 could have sparked a “financial calamity.” Osborne wrote to Ben Bernanke, who was then the Federal Reserve Chairman, and Timothy Geithner, then Treasury Secretary, to warn that prosecuting a “systemically important financial institution” like HSBC “could lead to [financial] contagion” and pose “very serious implications for financial and economic stability, particularly in Europe and Asia.”

The report charged that the FSA was “problematic,” “weighed in very strongly,” and caused a “firestorm,” which led then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to overrule the advice of his own prosecutors and not pursue criminal action.

“FSA has been on the phone for the criminal discussions,” officials wrote in emails released in the House report. “That’s what has caused the latest firestorm. The contents of that discussion are included in the Chancellor’s letter.”

The FSA was so desperate about the possibility of HSBC losing its charter to operate in the United States, that the FSA repeatedly warned that even the threat of possible charter withdrawal could have caused a fresh global financial crisis. Furthermore, the report said Holder “misled” Congress about the Justice Department’s reasoning for declining to prosecute. It said the Department did have enough evidence to pursue criminal charges against HSBC, despite Holder’s claim to the contrary, and pointed out that the bank had already admitted to the U.S. government that it had broken money-laundering rules.

The report said: “Rather than lacking adequate evidence to prove HSBC’s criminal conduct, internal Treasury documents show that DOJ leadership declined to pursue [its legal team’s] recommendation to prosecute HSBC because senior DOJ leaders were concerned that prosecuting the bank `could result in a global financial disaster’— as the FSA repeatedly warned.”

This is a dramatic, “smoking gun” confirmation of Lyndon LaRouche’s repeated insistence that the Obama administration’s policies, including salvaging the criminal banking system, are dictated by the British Empire.