Question: Hello,  I'm a finance student at Caltech Pomona. I was just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how far into this recession we're currently in, and how much worse it could get, or much more there is ahead of us?

LaRouche: Oh! This is not a recession! Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho! This is the end. This is the bottom, that's dropping out. This is the bottom that's dropping out of the Doctor Dentons.

There is no possibility of the present world monetary-financial system, continuing much longer. Now, if you look at the history of these kinds of problems, and you look at how long this thing has been dying--and it has been dying--you realize that you can not predict exactly when something's going to happen. I'm the best forecaster in the world, on performance, in the past 40 years, but I would never try to predict exactly when something's going to happen. I've come close a couple of times, but I was right, when I did it, because I saw what was going to happen. And I always dictate, in forecasting, exactly what the choices are. Because, there's always a choice. There's never a simple, predetermined result: There's always a choice. That's the nature of mankind: We always have choices.

Now, the choice is this: We now have ended, as we've documented, about the year 2000, certainly--it started in 1999. Let me just go back on this, because it is a technical question, and probably requires a technical answer: In the middle of the 1990s, I was concerned about the way the Clinton Administration was going to go. We had, at that point, we had a very destructive force of the Newt Gingrich rampage, the fascist. And, he came in, as Speaker of the House in January of 1995, where he made the famous French Revolution speech, advertising himself, by description, as a fascist. He set out to destroy the U.S. government, using the ideas of Prof. Leo Strauss, of whom he is follower.

So, we got into this fight, and Clinton was on the fence. We had people in the Clinton Administration, who were defending the General Welfare, as Clinton had done, up to that point, against Gingrich's Conservative Revolution. But, at that point, Clinton capitulated. He capitulated largely under pressure from Dick Morris, and Al Gore, and people like that. It was a terrible mistake. And, he enthusiastically endorsed Gore for Vice President--it was a mistake. He should have thrown the thing open, as President.

But, I saw, and I warned at the time, that we were headed for an immediate crisis, as a result of this change in policy, which had been forced through under pressure from Gingrich. In 1997, we had what was called the "Asia crisis." It was not an Asia crisis; it was a crisis of the system, which happened to hit hard, because the speculators tried to defend the system in Europe and in the United States, by looting Asia--that's why it was called an Asia crisis. It was not that something happened in Asia, it happened that powers, centered in Europe and in the United States, especially Anglo-American power, moved in to loot Asia, as a way of trying to bail out the United States and Great Britain and so forth, from what was threatened to be a collapse crisis.

The following year, 1998, you had the GKO crisis, the Russian bond crisis. Now, the Russian bond GKOs were a fake, set up by British and American speculators, hedge funds, largely; just like the hedge funds that had set up the Asia crisis the year before. At that point, in August of 1998, when the hedge fund collapse came, the GKO bond collapse came, Clinton was convinced that I was right on the crisis, and he and his Secretary of the Treasury, and others, were moving--as he announced in New York in September--to consider some reform of the monetary system.

However, they had the Lewinsky scandal thrown at them, by Gingrich and others--Lewinsky was not the reason for the impeachment: It was Clinton's threat to move toward monetary reform, that turns all the cats and dogs against him. We, at that time, acted, with some marginal value, to stop the impeachment, or to defeat the impeachment, which succeeded. We mobilized people to mobilize some other people, and we turned the corner, and the impeachment was defeated.

But then, in October of 1998, after Clinton had backed down from the monetary reform, the problem they faced was something I had warned about, that we would face a Brazil crisis, which was due for approximately February of 1999. So, the Administration went to various people and said, "What do we do about this? How do we stop the Brazil crisis?" And George Soros and company said, "Wall of money. Print money like mad. Create money by all kinds of electronic and other means. Flood the market with money, to keep the system from collapsing, to keep the financial markets from collapsing." And that's what they did.

The result was, that in the course of 1999, we began to pick up the fact, that the rate at which money was being generated, was faster than the financial system was growing. Which meant that the stabilizing of the financial markets, depended upon a hyperinflationary printing of money--electronically, or otherwise.

In the year 2000, it became obvious to us, that this was not merely a short-term trend, because of the "wall of money" policy, but this had become a long-term, integral feature of the system. So, this was a case, as of Spring of the year 2000--election year 2000. At the time that the nominations were locked up for Bush and Gore, as the only two contending candidates for that year, the depression was already inevitable.

So, when Bush came in, after this confused mess, after this crisis in the election, I made a forecast, in January, saying what was going to happen to the Bush Administration. And I forecast two things: The aggravation of the economic crisis, which has accelerated, as I warned, since that time. Secondly, under these conditions, as it happened in Germany in 1933, the attempt of some forces to prevent a Franklin Roosevelt-type of action against the Depression, would tempt them, as the former head of the Bank of England had done in 1933, to raise the money from New York to keep Hitler's party alive, and to put Hitler into power in Germany, in January of 1933, in time to have Hitler in power, before Roosevelt would be actually inaugurated.

So, then they had the Reichstag Fire, which was organized by Goering, in Feb. 27 of 1933; on Feb. 28, 1933, a dictatorship was established in Germany, which never quit until the end of the war. And therefore, we had World War II, as a result of a coup, organized to prevent Germany from being under a government which would cooperate with Franklin Roosevelt, with Roosevelt's recovery program. Because Germany had, under Dr. Wilhelm Lautenbach, had a policy which was comparable to Roosevelt's policy, for German recovery, for dealing with the Depression. And, Lautenbach, later, as I've learned, praised Roosevelt--that is, as an economist--praised Roosevelt's program as contrasted with the failure of Hoover's program.

So, there's no question that, with the Lautenbach factor, and with von Schleicher as Chancellor, instead of Hitler, in March of 1933, that Germany and the United States would be on parallel tracks on international policy. And, under those conditions World War II would have never happened.

What I warned against, in January, was such a thing happening in the United States. It happened, on Sept. 11, 2023. And, out of the woodwork came Cheney, with a Nazi-like program, which Cheney had already had in 1991, when he was Secretary of Defense. And, that's what we're living under.

So, we're now living under a condition, where you have a President who is not competent mentally; under a world financial system, which is disintegrating by the day; you have 46 states, at least, in the United States, which could not possibly balance their budgets, their state budgets--can't do it; no way to do it. Nothing will work, except a Roosevelt-type approach. Which means we have to put the international financial system into reorganization, through receivership; bankruptcy receivership of the IMF system. That, governments can agree to do, and we must do it. It's analogous to what Roosevelt did with the bank holiday: We must do that, or we'll not get out of the mess, hmm?

And, we must also move toward measures of economic recovery, which are largely in large-scale infrastructure project stimulus, in rails, power generation and distribution, water management; keep the airline system alive, don't let it sink; rebuild the health-care system; rebuild the educational system, and a few things like that.

And, give the credit, in many cases, not just as Federal projects--there are some cases where Federal projects are needed--but also to the states. The states need credit. For example, the state of California: The state of California has an energy crisis, which was caused, largely, as a result of the crazy deregulation law. Now, what is needed, to reverse that crime, called the deregulation law (which I think more and more people in California are inclined to, right now); but the state of California requires the source of credit, given its present financial condition, which has been aggravated, precisely by deregulation. It needs the credit, which must come largely from the Federal government, directly or indirectly, for the large-scale investment in rebuilding both the generating and distribution capacity of the power industry.  You have, also, for example in California/Arizona: We have a disaster in some of the aquifers, in water management system. We need large-scale investment there.

So, necessary investments of that type, in public utility areas, can provide the stimulant, of employment and to business, which are needed to get a recovery going. If we don't do that, which is the other--that's the choice--if we don't do that, we're going to Hell.

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