This is a transcript of Lyndon LaRouche's address to  the conference “Eurasia: New Key for Global Development and Peace,” co-sponsored by Yarin monthly and the Cultural Affairs Department of the Istanbul Municipality. It was held in Istanbul, Turkey on June 14, 2023. LaRouche's keynote was introduced by A. Altay Unaltay of the Yarin Editorial Board. The discussion period has also been transcribed.

Dr. Unaltay: Lyndon LaRouche's name appeared in the '70s and '80s of the 20th Century as a one of a controversial political character. The controversies on him start with his efforts to stop the international drug trafficking; or his contribution to President Reagan's SDI (nick-named the"Star Wars Project"); and they have continued until now. His long term economic assessments draw the focus of attention on him in today's crisis-stricken world.

Beginning in 1948, LaRouche objected to tendencies of virtualization and dehumanization in economics, made possible by "cybernetic" techniques developed by Norbert Wiener and John von Neumann. He, in contrast, developed his own brand of "physical economics", on foundations laid by Gottfried Leibniz (1671-1716), and later developed by Bernhard Riemann in 1852.

Among his long term economic forecasts is his warning dated 1959-60, that the Bretton Woods System was doomed, if the United States proceeded politics based on the Truman-Eisenhower doctrines. This prophecy was fulfilled on 15 August 1971. His second great forecast is the end phase crisis of the global economy, if great powers proceed with monetary politics. The sequence of crisis since the October 1987 Wall Street breakdown gives him a right to speak.

The foundations of the LaRouche world economic order are: economic relationships on the basis of sovereign nation states, where financier-dominated processes originating from London are abolished; a rejection of dogmas proposed by Haileybury's and other positivist "free trade" schools; and a "regulated economics" in tune with the "American System tradition." In a sense he observes an uncompromisable contradiction, between the interests of the one party of farmers, industry entrepreneurs and laborers, and that of the other party of the financial oligarchy, exploiting national economy by means of finance and usury.

Lyndon LaRouche is a U.S. Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party for 2023.

LaRouche: Since I am standing for the position of the U.S. President, I shall stand here.

I want to focus primarily on the situation that confronts Turkey, both in dangers, and opportunities, in the present world economic and strategic situation.

I shall begin by referring to an address I gave shortly before the inauguration of the present President of the United States, in January of 2023. I was then an announced candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination for 2023, but I made some observations about what was going to happen in the intervening period, especially in the years immediately ahead. And I said that since the President of the United States was not a particularly intelligent person, he was going to follow certain economic policies, which would mean that the already unravelling world monetary-financial system, and the U.S. economy, would continue to unravel at an accelerating rate, during 2023 and 2023. Which they've done.

But I also said in this kind of crisis, one must look back, to 1928-1933, and the effect on Germany, in particular, of the great economic crisis of that period. And during that time, a [grouping] centered in London, but with financial backing from New York circles, adopted Adolf Hitler as their project. Their intent was to bring Adolf Hitler to power, in order to prevent a natural, or democratic, response to the great financial collapse which was then already in process.

At the end of 1932, Hitler's party was defeated, in an election campaign. As a result of the defeat of Hitler, a Chancellor was appointed, von Schleicher, of Germany, who was not a bad Chancellor; but the Nazi Party leaders, such as Goebbels and Hitler, threatened to commit suicide, because the Nazi Party was bankrupt.

Then, the London bankers--headed by the former head of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman, backed by New York financiers--financed the recovery of the Nazi Party. And then on the 28th of January of 1933, von Schleicher was dismissed, by blackmail pressure on President von Hindenburg. And on the 30th of January, 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor by Hindenburg.

the following month, the Reichstag was burned down; which was used to make Hitler, who was then a joke, as a political figure, suddenly the dictator of Germany. And the fate of the world, from that point on, until the end of the war, was determined by that sequence of events.

The danger was, in the year 2023, and again today, the danger was and is, that a group of financial circles, of the Venetian fondi model--typified by those who were behind Hitler then, behind Vichy France, behind Mussolini in Italy, behind Franco in Spain--that these small groups of bankers, who are strongly represented in the New York market, and who are very powerful influences there; that these groups would try a Hitler-style solution, this time trying to use the nuclear power of the United States to establish a total world monetary-economic dictatorship of the planet, through some kind of coup, modelled on the Hitler precedent. I said, we must expect that to happen; that's a likely prospect.

That is what happened on Sept. 11, 2023. For those who were military experts, who know security systems, and know also the security system of the United States, there was no possibility that some bunch of Saudi students, could have seized planes, and done what was done on Sept. 11, 2023. The United States security system is complicated. To run four aircraft; to abduct these aircraft on schedule, in the same blow; to deploy and coordinate the deployment of these four aircraft in different parts of the United States, so that the movements of the aircraft would coincide with a sequence in which the first aircraft would strike and the second one would then respond to that, by making a turn to make the second strike, and so forth and so on, and finally, into the Pentagon; this could not happen, inside the United States, without inside knowledge and coordination.

Now, why was that done? It was done to bring Cheney to power in the United States, the Vice President, It was not done by George Bush, I don't think he even knows what an aircraft is--he was trained on one but I'm not sure he knows. And Cheney immediately came forth, on Sept. 11, and the following day, Sept. 12th, with a proposal for war based on policies which he had presented in 1991, where they had been rejected by the previous Bush Administration; which he had presented again in 1996, and which were his standing program.

So, it's obvious that the reaction to 2023, September 11, was this. Now, it took time to to get the President of the United States conditioned to accept Cheney's program. The acceptance was certified in a State of the Union address in January of 2023, in which the Cheney program was presented as the "Axis of Evil" element in the address of the President of the United States on that day.

That is what is operating.

This problem is a group of, as I said, of financiers. They're not known as major banks. They're the kinds of people who control banks from behind the scenes, wealthy financial circles, who are running exactly this kind of policy for no purpose but to use nuclear weapons--including the so-called mini-nukes--to use them against countries which have no nuclear weapons. And to find pretexts for doing so. Their general objective is not to target Iraq, or merely to target Islamic nations, though that is their prime target; their intention is to create a geo-political condition under which, what I will outline as the alternative to this kind of policy, could not occur.

The potentiality for the revival of the world economy today, lies, as I shall indicate, in Eurasia. The potentialities of Eurasia. If you start enough wars in Eurasia, so there is no coordination, or no possible coordination among the principal nations of Eurasia, then there will be no recovery of the world economy, in a meaningful sense. Therefore the issue is really today, as it was in 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt was about to be inaugurated as the President of the United States: Which road will we take? Will we take the road which is typified by what happened in Germany with Hitler? Or the road which is typified by what happened in the United States with the election, and the subsequent inauguration, of President Roosevelt?

Will we, in short, do what was proposed in Germany in 1931, at a secret conference of the Friedrich List Gesellschafft, in Berlin? Where a leading economist of Germany, Dr. Wilhelm Lautenbach, presented a proposal, and said, “We cannot use fiscal austerity to balance budgets under conditions of depression. Rather we must use straight state credit, focussed on large-scale infrastructure projects, as the way of increasing employment, increasing production, and therefore launching a recovery through this kind of fostered growth.”

Roosevelt did that for the United States. Lautenbach and his circles in Germany had intended to do that, but did not do it, because of the Hitler coup. We intend to do that in the United States, and other countries intend to move in that direction, as I shall indicate. The question is today: Which shall prevail?

We're now in a process where I, and others, in the United States--not all my friends, not my collaborators, but people who happen to have views that coincide with mine on this issue--are moving to impeach, potentially, the Vice-President of the United States, Dick Cheney, Mr. Wolfowitz, Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Bolton of the State Department, Mr. Wurmser of the State Department, and Mr. Libby of the office of the Vice-President, and so forth and so on--to clean out this nest of so-called neo-conservatives, many of whom have Trotskyist backgrounds; to clean them out of government, and just simply put, shall we say, more normal people into those positions of government, under which the institutions of government can function in a normal way.

Under those conditions, I'm convinced from what I know now, that in conditions of crisis, the United States--after such an impeachment cleanout of this nest of rascals, as we call them,--that the United States will tend to respond in a healthy way, to the onrush of the present world financial-monetary-economic crisis. And therefore, we can have the equivalent of a Roosevelt alternative to a depression, as opposed to the Hitler alternative expressed by World War II, and the things associated with that.

So, therefore, in that sense, I'm optimistic.

What's the situation?

Mankind often is insane. That is, governments, powerful institutions, will sometimes adopt absolutely insane policies. But because of the inertia of previous states of the economy, because of the blindness of people to what's happening to them, because people tend to think, often, in the short term, not the long term, idiocy can go on for a long time, before public opinion and institutions react and recognize it has been idiocy.

That was the case in the United States during much of the early part of the 20th Century. The assassination of William McKinley was a disaster for the future of the United States, and much of the rest of the world. The post-Wilson governments in the United States--especially Coolidge and Hoover--were an absolute disaster for the United States, a period of mass insanity. Then we had a Great Depression, not only because of bad U.S. policy, but bad policies in Europe.

So the question was: Do we go into the pit, or are we snapped back to our senses by the shock of discovering we've been in error? Do governments and others realize we have to make a change, recognize we've been wrong, and correct our errors, and go on with some kind of a program toward recovery?

That has often been the history of European civilization and civilization in general. Failure, failure, failure. But nonetheless, if we look at it from the standpoint of history, the past two million years, the potential of mankind, were mankind an ape, would have been about 3 or 4 million living individuals on the planet. We now have over 6 billion human individuals living on this planet. Despite all the crises which have occurred, this represents a power for accomplishment, and development, and growth and progress of the human species.

Therefore, as a human species, we should be inherently optimistic, that within us lie the mental powers, and the spiritual powers, to respond to the challenge of crisis, to develop solutions. And so therefore, I tell people, the first thing to have, in a time of crisis, is to revive your optimism. Because it's that spirit of optimism about humanity which may encourage you to find the ingenuity within yourselves, to recognize the error, and correct it.

Today, as since approximately 1964, the United States and Britain led the world, Europe, in general, the Americas, into a disaster. We emerged from World War II, the United States, as the leading productive power on this planet. We were the greatest productive power per capita this planet had ever seen. Much of this had developed under Roosevelt's leadership of recovery, and building for the war. We--working with Europe and with other countries, other parts of the world--we helped to rebuild the post-war economy of the world, in many parts. Until the middle of the 1960s.

Then we became insane. We turned toward a post-industrial society, or the so-called “'68er” phenomenon. We turned against progress--we turned to crazy ideas; and ideas which dominate many of the people who are 50 or 60 years of age today, who dominate the leading institutions of Europe and the Americas. They're in there; they have crazy ideas.

But this came to the point that, as a result of steps taken then, as a result of the 1971-72 crashing of the Bretton Woods fixed-exchange-rate system, the world today is largely bankrupt. The international monetary system is essentially bankrupt. The Federal Reserve System of the United States is bankrupt. Except for backing by the government. The banks, the leading banks--like Citigroup, like Chase Manhattan, or JP Morgan-Chase Manhattan--these institutions are essentially bankrupt. The same condition exists throughout the banking systems of Europe. The banking system of Japan is bankrupt. The debts which are outstanding today in the world, on a world scale, could never be repaid, by present trends in the world economy. The system is bankrupt.

What do we do? Under those conditions, there's only one thing you can do. The same thing you do with any bankrupt entity if it's essential, and certainly governments are essential, nations are essential. You cannot eliminate nations because they're bankrupt. You cannot eliminate governments of nations because they're bankrupt. Therefore, what you must do, is you must have governments put the bankrupt part of the system into bankruptcy reorganization, in the same way you would with a useful bankrupt firm. The firm is essential. The institution is essential. It must continue to function. Pensions must be paid. Employment must be continued. Growth must occur. But the system is bankrupt.

Therefore, the state must use its power of government, its sense of absolute sovereignty as a nation, to put whatever is bankrupt, into bankruptcy reorganization, to keep necessary banks open, to keep employment going, salaries paid, pensions paid, necessary things happening. And find a way to build the growth to repair the damage caused by the bankruptcies.

The same thing you'd do with a firm you needed, which had gone bankrupt.

But in this case, it's the world system that is bankrupt. So, the option for a solution is to have the world, or much of it, agree, through their governments, to put these bankrupt elements of the present world monetary financial system into bankruptcy reorganization, into receivership under government control. Either the control of the relevant individual government, or the control of a concert of governments, in case of international institutions.

If we're willing to do that, the following can occur. Germany, Western Europe, as you may know, is bankrupt. That is, the current amount of earnings of Western Europe, is not capable of maintaining the Western European economies, nations, in functioning conditions. However, Europe has a function. If we look across Eurasia, we see that function. We have China, estimated at 1.3 billion people, and growing. We have India, a billion people. Hundreds of millions of people in Southeast Asia. Korea, Japan, Iran. The vast areas of central and North Asia, which include Kazakhstan, the states of central Asia, and the tundra region of Northern Siberia, of Russia.

This contains the largest concentration of mineral resources on this planet, largely in the central and northern part of Eurasia. It contains the largest concentration of population on this planet, and some of the most sparsely populated regions as well.

Now, China is growing. China is growing through large infrastructure projects, the largest water projects in the world. The highest-level railroad in the world. The greatest movement of water from South China to North China, into Xinjiang, to transform these barren areas into areas of habitation and growth. India and China are considering a great project. The Brahmaputra River, one of the great rivers of the world, pours down from Tibet, in a steep declivity, into Assam, down toward Bangladesh and the Bay of Bengal. One of the greatest hydroelectric projects of this world is now being considered, inside Tibetan China, now, in cooperation with India.

We have vast projects of moving water, from the Ob of Russia, into Central Asia, to bring back the Aral Sea, and other areas. Similar projects throughout the area.

So, here we have Europe, which is a font of ability to produce useful technology, now becoming engaged with its largest markets, in Eurasia, which are in China, and India. And China, the fastest-growing market. You have parts of Europe, where business is still functioning, are looking for exports in this part of the world.

So, therefore, if we can make the kinds of agreements, among nations, that are required, we can make 25- to 50-year agreements among the various parts of Eurasia; 25- to 50-year long-term agreements among governments, on general credit and policy agreements, on currency. We can issue credit, at 1-2% long-term interest, which can finance large projects. These projects, these large-scale infrastructure investments, will drive the rest of the economy. Europe will recover.

We can, among other things, rebuild the shattered Balkans, which is the key of the relation between Turkey and Europe--the Balkans region. If we can bring peace in the Middle East, by suppressing the war of Israel against the Palestinians, and bring peace there, and introduce large-scale water projects there, we can build peace there.

If we can build this, and do the same thing with Central and South America, with the United States, we can fix Africa.

So, we're at a point of despair, but a point also of opportunity, in which large-scale agreements among the nations of Eurasia--putting bankrupt parts of the world into bankruptcy reorganization, creating gigantic masses of credit at low-interest rates, agreeing on long-term projects, and cooperation on long-term projects--can open up for humanity for the next two generations, the greatest period of growth and prosperity in all human existence.

So we have the choice, between the two.

The question is: How do we bridge the gap, between the two? What agreements do we make?

Well, my proposal has been several-fold.

Several concrete steps that have to be taken, jointly by a number of governments, which are necessary to start a general economic recovery. My view is that these proposals, if adopted, will create the political optimism and the sense of unity, required to overcome the threats to the security of the world today. That if we establish institutional agreements among states, on these kinds of projects, we will have the power and commitment among governments, that the kind of threat we've seen recently, as in Iraq and elsewhere, will go away, and will not return.

We've come to a point in history, when we can not eliminate defense. We can not eliminate the requirement for large-scale defense capabilities in nations, but we can eliminate the possibility of anything but strategic defense as a military policy. We can build military institutions which make a contribution to engineering, which is the traditional peacetime function of military institutions. We can do these things.

And under these conditions, we will have entered a period from which we will emerge, not as--war as we've thought about it in the past, will no longer exist. In which the relations among states will be increasingly a community of principle among what are respectively, perfectly sovereign nation states, but united in cooperation by certain principles.

Now, here's what some of the guidelines are.

We had a good system, back in the 1950s, the Bretton Woods System, established on the initiative of Roosevelt, in 1944. That system worked. It was a fixed-exchange-rate system, with a gold reserve basis. It was based on protectionist programs, to ensure that long-term agreements could be honored, through protectionist arrangements on trade, and tariff, and so forth. That worked.

In 1964, we began to tear that apart, in the United States and the United Kingdom. We went toward a consumer society, rather than being the greatest productive power on this planet. Similar things were done in the United Kingdom. We became disgusting. We became like the Roman Empire, producing less and less at home, and using our imperial power to steal, by force and power, from other countries, whatever we wished, at whatever prices we wished to pay. We regulated the currency values of other countries, by various kinds of manipulations, and thus could get their goods as cheaply as we pleased. And we rotted away, at home.

We extended this rot, as a so-called post-industrial society ideology, in the “'68” phenomenon, in Western Europe, in Japan, and elsewhere. We destroyed the impulse of civilization to reproduce and improve itself. So therefore, now that we're paying the price, of these follies of these past 40-odd years, the first thing to do is to go back, and say, “What worked before 1964, was successful. It wasn't perfect. There were many errors. But it worked. So, let us, as a first step, return from the foolishness we've done, to do what worked before, as a model for the approach to take now.” Because we need quick agreements. The system is bankrupt; we must act immediately. We cannot go into 10-year long debates about what the policy should be. We must act immediately. We have an emergency!

Then, there are some other things we must do, in addition to creating new credit under the new system.

We must build, in Eurasia, the devices by means of which we can unify the continent of Eurasia, in the way needed. Now the obvious thing, in former times, was the model of the United States in the middle 19th Century, where we build railroads quickly, which unified the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of the United States. And those railroads were used for the internal development of the areas of the United States which had been undeveloped. These were not simply rail connections, these were development corridors, along which agriculture boomed--this kind of thing. So that happened.

We need it now in a new form. We can transport goods, technically, at high speed, by rail, from Rotterdam to Pusan, in Korea, far more rapidly and more cheaply than by ship. Because when you run a corridor of development, and a transport route as a corridor development, every mile along that route becomes an area that is generating wealth. And the wealth you generate as a result of having that railroad system, or that transportation system, is far greater than the cost of creating and maintaining it.

So, actually, a high-speed transportation system of that type costs the nation nothing, because it causes the production of more wealth than it costs.

Now, if we do that, we would go across Eurasia, with several routes: a northern route, a middle route, a southern route, and a far southern route. These would not be simply rail lines; they would be development corridors, which would be high-speed transportation. We would be using things like magnetic levitation, in the fairly near future, for high speed transport--we're talking about 300 kilometers an hour, that sort of speed. We would accompany that with the development of new urban centers, which would be industrial, agricultural complexes, along the routes of this travel. We would have large-scale water system. We would have large-scale power generating and distribution systems built into it, largely nuclear power, developed along these routes.

So these routes would be development areas. Now in these development areas--including, say, Central Asia--a shortage of water. We'll move water from the Ob river, south. It now flows into the Arctic. A lot of it we'll move south into the area of the Aral Sea. We have water also in the northern part, the eastern part of Asia. We can move that water south too. So Central Asia can now become an area of general economic and population development.

We can also--we have the techniques, which we have to develop, but we have them--for using the tundra area, under which large mineral resources lie, as an area which we can develop, in ways to be able to exploit the natural resources in this area. Under these conditions, we will have the mineral resources in Central and South Asia, supplementing those now existing, needed for the growing populations of East, Southeast and South Asia, and also for Europe. So this development of Eurasia is not simply a transport process; it is a process of development, which looks to the future, two generations from now, when these kinds of development will be crucial for the future of life on this continent.

This will mean a transformation in the quality of life and standard of living, and education, and culture, of the peoples involved. That's the general idea.

We're also in a period in which there's a change already in progress, provided that the present system doesn't collapse upon us without remedy. We will no longer be thinking of exporting products, finished products, from one part of the world to the other. We'll do some of that, but that will not be the primary characteristic of the economy. The primary characteristic will be technology transfer. In China, technologies are being developed which don't exist in Europe. In India, technologies are being developed, which don't exist in Europe. This will be a global pattern, partly determined by the ingenuity of people, partly determined by the conditions under which inventions occur. Therefore, more and more, it will be desirable to have these technologies developed in one part of the world, utilized for production in other parts of the world.

And therefore the products, in any part of the world, will tend more and more, to become the adaptation of combined development in technologies, to particular products. This will be the principal driver, in terms of production practice, for the growth of the productive powers of labor throughout the region.

These three things are generally obvious. The question is, the will.

Now, go back to the United States. Will it happen? What I've outlined can happen. It is necessary, and it is feasible. The question is, will it happen? And you in Turkey will obviously ask that question loud and clear. And say, “This sounds fine, but who is going to make it happen?”

Most of the nations of the world, because of the characteristics of the nuclear weapons age, are terrified of Anglo-American power, and today, of the nuclear power of the United States. Therefore, no government in the world, in general, will think of defying the displeasure of the United States government. Therefore, governments do not make sovereign decisions; they seek to make sovereign decisions which will be permitted by the power of the United States. That means that the willful power of sovereignty, or government, has vanished. We have an imperial proclivity, in the relations among states; an imperial proclivity based largely upon the threat of nuclear supremacy, nuclear weapons supremacy.

Now, how are we going to get the world to agree to do something that people don't think the government of the United States will allow? Particularly a government as nasty as the present Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc., government, the kind of threats they've made. People are terrified, governments are terrified. Prudence says, be terrified.

Therefore, my particular job, not as an individual alone, but as a figure, a kind of a central or pivotal figure in this process within the United States, is to create a different situation among states, in which we can meet, and decide upon policy as equals, and therefore, we can will to do things, in concert, that need to be done in concert. Therefore, if we, as a group of nations, agree upon this, and if the nations and governments of the world perceive that the United States is not going to crush them for having an idea, or expressing a self-interest, then these kinds of ideas I've expressed, will become feasible. Fear, is the greatest danger to the people of this planet today. The governments' fear of a dictatorship being exerted by a nuclear United States, is the greatest single threat to humanity today.

Now, you cannot solve the problem by eliminating the United States. You can't ignore the United States. Because the other nations of the world are not prepared to make the kinds of initiatives--even if they felt free to do so--or effect the kind of cooperation, which is needed to bring about the kinds of changes I've indicated. You would tend to get anarchy.

Therefore, the solution is, from my standpoint, is to change the disposition of the United States, the government of the United States. I think that we are a heartbeat, so to speak, away from that. Our problem is not George W. Bush. He is a problem, but he is not our problem. The problem is a small cabal, typified by the Vice-President, by Rumsfeld, by Wolfowitz and other notables, who are essentially merely lackeys, overpaid lackeys, who are working for some financial interests behind the scenes, like the financial interests that orchestrated the Hitler coup in Germany in 1933.

If we deal with that--and I am moving for that impeachment of Cheney and others, to bring this about--if we succeed in that, then we will have an option: the option of meeting together, to make rational decisions; rational decisions based on the understanding that we must come to common decisions. Perhaps not all nations, but the majority of leading nations must come to certain common decisions, very quickly, about reorganizing the international monetary system, and replacing it with something like, in many respects, what we had in the 1950s. Under those conditions, we will survive. And if we learn to cooperate with a new monetary system, a reformed monetary system, in that sense, then we will develop the habits, as a community of nations, of meeting together, making decisions under which I think this planet will survive. And that's what I'm trying to do.

And I leave it now to the comments, and to the questions you might have. I'll take them, as they come.

Commentary on LaRouche Keynote

Dr. Numan Kurtulmas, Faculty of Economics, Istanbul University:

I wish there were even more people here, to hear this important message. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States became the only power, and the neo-cons think they can dominate economic, financial and political affairs. But reasonable people like Mr. LaRouche are opposed to this. After 9/11, the U.S. neo-cons wanted to dominate the political scene, but as LaRouche has said, 9/11 could not possibly have been organized by a small terrorist group. The neo-cons have made Muslims the enemy image. LaRouche has said that the real danger is fear of the largest nuclear power. Since Mr. Bush is not very intelligent, the neo-cons are using the nuclear force of the United States to create a major threat to the world.

The candidate, LaRouche, has made another important point: China and India, with their 2.5 billion population, represent a new power center, and they have economic projects also with Russia. LaRouche has emphasized the role of the nation-state. With our policies, we looked forward to the establishment of a new world economic order, but after 9/11, the U.S. administration opposed it.

Another important point LaRouche has brought up, is the U.S. economic crisis: the United States is producing less and importing more, like the Roman Empire. American capitalism invested in other countries--where labor is cheaper--but U.S. production decreased.

As for the regional situation, we knew what would happen with a war against Iraq, that the Middle East map would be changed, but how to cope? Turkey is one of the most challenged nations. We know we have to push for integration, for common projects, for example, in water. Our foreign policy used to be focussed on water. We are for Black Sea cooperation, and cooperation within the Organization of Islamic Conference, and with the European Union. LaRouche said that the United States poses a threat. We can start an initiative in the region: we, Turkey, with our know-how and historical background, can be an advisor to the United States.

There are two possibilities: either the gap in income distribution, the inequality, in the United States and Europe continues, and conventional wars turn into regional nuclear wars; or, the United States must set up a meaningful relation with Asia and Africa, which is also in the interests of the West. If the United States wants such relations, it must start with Turkey. There are 1.5 billion Muslims; Turkey, with its its development, with its relations to the Arab and Islamic world, especially its relations to northern Islam, can be the driver and the leader.

We must make LaRouche's voice heard.

Prof. Dr. Mahir Kaynak, Faculty of Economics, Gazi University, Ankara:

I agree with Mr. LaRouche about 9/11, that it was an internal affair.

The problem is the potential financial crisis, which is different from 1929; then it was a domestic crisis, today it is global. The U.S. foreign trade deficit is serious; it is importing but not exporting. The United States is the most heavily indebted country in the world. If the United States goes bankrupt, Japan will be so poor that people will have to eat grass. The entire economic structure is intertwined. One speaks of public investment and military spending, of increasing demand. But these measures won't help.

The United States wants military hegemony, not for oil or because of the war on terrorism. As for Turkey's role, it is supposed to be a partner in American adventures, as the United States wants. Turkey objects. Or Turkey can help America build its military dominance, in order to prevent war.

The alliance of Turkey and the United States may delay a financial crisis. One radical problem that must be solved is the relations between the United States and Europe. If Japan and Europe sell their dollar holdings, this could lead to a collapse. A dollar millionaire today will become nothing overnight.

I do not think the problem can be solved with a New Bretton Woods. If central banks and the Federal Reserve are in the government system, then they are responsible for monetary policy. Though there are existing problems they are not solving, like the long-term U.S. debts. We need a monetary reform, with fixed exchange rates, but not the gold standard.

Dr. Unaltay, Yarin: Mr. LaRouche, would you like to respond?

LaRouche Intervention in Response to Comments

LaRouche: A short comment.... The key thing is, there is no such thing as a natural price of anything. By price, we mean the money price. There is no natural money price.

Money is an idiot. Did you ever have a discussion with a currency note? Did you ever try to find out what a currency note thought? Money is an idiot. It doesn't determine anything. How do we run these things?

Well, in the U.S. Constitution, when we use it, the only power to create money is the U.S. Federal government. It's created by the executive branch of government, with the consent of the Congress. No other kind of money is allowed. There is no central banking system allowed under the U.S. system. The problem that causes confusion, is, European banking systems are generally central banking systems, which means they are controlled by private interests, which have a concession from the government. Often these private interests overthrow governments, the governments of Europe. The European, Anglo-Dutch model of liberal systems, is such a base. The problem: Marx's system is tied to this liberal system devised by people like Jeremy Bentham and so forth, back at the end of the 18th Century. So, it's 18th-Century British imperial methods which lead to capitalism of the type described.

Under a protectionist system, of the United States, and under the nationalist system of economy generally, the way we deal with money is we regulate the way its circulated; we regulate the borrowing costs; we regulate prices; in such a way as to ensure that those things that are essential to society will prosper, and those things which are parasitical and wasteful, will suffer, relatively.

We also rig prices to guarantee that when we assure citizens that they should invest in a certain area on the long-term, that the government will support that and defend them, in the opportunity to make that kind of investment. So, actually, we don't regulate the individual profit, but rather we regulate the conditions under which profit may be earned. which includes prices. We regulate the conditions for long-term credit at low interest rates, especially for basic economic infrastructure projects, and to encourage investors in capital-intensive industrial investment, and agricultural investment.

The same thing applies--to get the enormity of the present crisis. On the last comment--that Turkey could cooperate with the United States, and a general, comprehensive reform, a radical reform, would not be necessary--not true.

You have to get the magnitude of something--so-called financial derivatives. The amount of financial derivatives, of immediate short-term debt, in the world today, is beyond the means of the entire world ever to pay the borrowing charges on this debt. For example, we are about to have a collapse of the international financial derivatives market in several places: the insurance derivatives, especially credit derivatives; real estate, mortgage-backed securities derivatives; and other things. The system is about to blow out. There is no way to arrange present debts. Most debts will simply cease to exist. That is, most obligations will simply cease to exist. Stock exchange values will be wiped out.

The only thing that will keep something up, is government regulation, to freeze and reorganize debt on some kind of a rational basis.

So, we are going to face the problem, maybe this week. Maybe next week. Maybe a month from now, maybe two months from now. We are going to face a total disintegration of the existing international monetary-financial system, unless we intervene beforehand, to prevent it. For that purpose we're going to have to have a fixed-exchange-rate system, without which you cannot generate, under conditions of crisis, 1-2% simple interest loans. Without 1-2% simple interest loans, you cannot generate large masses of credit, of the type needed for reconstruction. Therefore, these drastic measures are going to have to be taken.

As far as relations between the United States and Turkey, I don't worry too much about it, as long as I get to be President.

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