As the Financial System Disintegrates, Market Psychosis Is Alive and Well

The only real surprise regarding the financial markets after the first week of 2016, is that people are acting surprised that a meltdown is underway. Lyndon LaRouche had certainly given ample, and repeated, warning, through this publication and elsewhere, that this was going to happen—for anyone who cared to listen.

To the report that the Dow dropped 6.5% this week, as part of a $4 trillion wipe-out of the value of global equities, add the fact that mutual funds saw the biggest weekly outflow of cash since September 2015, with $8.8 billion fleeing mainly from U.S.-based stock funds. Oil ended up losing 10% on the week, with Goldman Sachs saying a much bigger blood-letting is required: oil could hit $20 per barrel, they said in a note yesterday. Their argument is that, over the last year the world has been producing 1.5 million bpd more than is consumed, and that producers are not yet ready to slash production at current prices—so better drive them down further.

The implementation of “bail-in” across the European Union on Jan. 1 has had what should have been the expected result—a total freezing up of the bond market. And not only bank bonds, which are now subject to confiscation in the coming bank crises, but even corporate bonds. Not a single major financial bond was successfully issued in Europe last week. What will happen today?

Bail-in is also the law of the land in the United States, since the fraudulent Dodd-Frank bill was implemented by Obama. Far from “reining in” Wall Street, Dodd-Frank was in fact written by Wall Street, in order to prevent a restoration of Glass-Steagall, while permitting unrestricted gambling, leading to the now total bankruptcy of the trans-Atlantic banking system.

Although Glass-Steagall is now the central issue in the Presidential campaign in the U.S., it is a farce. For any candidate to promise to implement Glass-Steagall after the election, is a criminal diversion from the economic and strategic collapse now upon us. Only the immediate implementation of Glass-Steagall—within the next few weeks at most—can prevent the collapse of the Western financial system as a whole, and the immediate danger of global war being driven by that collapse.

Such an immediate solution is indeed possible, LaRouche noted today. The minds of the citizens can be radically transformed in such a moment of crisis—“in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye”—if they are provided access to a vision of creativity, of Classical art and Classical science, which has been virtually eliminated in the degeneration of our culture. That must be our task.