The reality of the collapse of the entire western financial system is no more clearly expressed than in the discussion now dominating the leading banking circles across Europe and the US—to adopt “helicopter money” as the next stage of insanity in dealing with the bankruptcy of the system. An idea introduced by economic fascist Milton Friedman, and promoted by former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, helicopter money entails the central banks by-passing the banks altogether, and simply printing money for the governments, or even for businesses and private citizens.
Insane? Of course—and those few leading bankers who have retained an ounce of sanity are admitting it. Otmar Issing, the former chief economist at the European Central Bank (whose current chief Mario Draghi announced this month that it will increase the QE printing of money for the banks from 60 to 80 billion euros every month, and reduce interest rates to negative!) today told the German Press Agency that this discussion was simply a declaration of bankruptcy. “I see the entire idea of helicopter money as worrisome, even devastating,” Issing said. “For it is nothing else than a bankruptcy declaration of monetary policy…. A central bank that is throwing out money for free, will hardly be able to regain control of the printing-press…. I view that as a total mental disarray.”
Yet the American and European populations have been so beaten down and terrified that they tolerate this madness. As the American population is driven into massive drug addiction, demoralization and escalating numbers of suicides, people say, “Yes, but—I didn’t cause that and there is nothing I can do.”
That is both false and cowardly. What can and must be done was demonstrated today in Frankfurt, Germany, where scientists and engineers and citizens from across Europe and Africa met with Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche to discuss “Solving the Economic and Refugee Crises with the New Silk Road!” It was also demonstrated in Texas, where LaRouchePAC leader Kesha Rogers intervened in a demoralized meeting of NASA scientists who were resigned to living within Obama’s collapsing NASA budget. Rogers revived their spirits by addressing the cause of the crisis in the collapse of the financial system, which can and must be replaced, and in Obama himself, who can and must be removed from office—now, not next year. It was even demonstrated in war-torn Yemen, where a friend of LaRouche released the recently translated Arabic version of the EIR Special Report The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge, introduced enthusiastically by the former President of Sana’a University.
Backing up this effort stand China and Russia. Secretary Kerry is in Moscow, where he is meeting with Foreign Minister Lavrov and President Putin, continuing to carry on real diplomacy outside of the control of the White House, to end the terrorist threat in Syria and beyond. In China, Premier Li Keqiang brought the leaders of the Mekong nations together to launch the Silk Road process along the Mekong—a policy promoted by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, modeled on his TVA project, but which has been systematically sabotaged from any significant progress over these past 80 years under the influence of the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. China will now sidestep that sabotage and help these national launch real development, as they are across the world.
Americans and Europeans are beginning to recognize, although far too slowly, that the hysterical effort to present Russia and China as enemies, and that we must prepare for war, is both suicidal for the human race, and the opposite of the truth. China and Russia and the BRICS nations are offering a life-line of a scientific and cultural Renaissance to a dying culture in the West. Are we human enough to get on board?
