Your New Responsibilities

Pass Glass-Steagall Now Helga Zepp-LaRouche's addressed a nationwide call of LaRouche PAC activists on Jan. 29. Her remarks have been edited. Helga Zepp-LaRouche: First of all, hello to everybody. I think everybody knows that with the election of Donald Trump, the world has completely changed. German Foreign Minister Steinmeier put a fine point on it, saying that the Trump election means the end of the entire order of the 20th Century. It is very clear that the United States now has a choice: One is to continue with the "special relationship" with Great Britain, which was the basis for the unipolar world for the last 25 years, more or less, with a few exceptions of the Clinton years. And it is clear that the British would like to continue that, which is why Theresa May was the first foreign head of government to come and try to re-establish that special relationship, which would be very, very bad. On the other side there is the clear perspective that the United States could enter the strategic alliance with Russia-and possibly China and India-which would create the basis to really move world politics into a completely new paradigm of collaboration of major nations to solve urgent problems like the economic crisis, the terrorism problem, and many other such problems. Now, it is extremely clear from the first week of Trump's being in office, that he intends to follow through on all of his election promises. From my standpoint it is very important that-given the fact that the problems are so manifold-that people not get freaked out about this action and that action, but really concentrate on the two absolutely most crucial questions without which nothing else can be solved. The first very, very crucial question is that Trump promised that he would improve the relationship with Russia, and that, for the sake of world peace, is the most important issue. Because if Hillary Clinton had carried out her policies in Syria, with the no-fly zones and the whole provocation against Russia in particular, we would have been on a short road to World War III. So therefore, the fact that Donald Trump spoke yesterday with five world leaders-among them, President Putin of Russia, and that they apparently established a very good rapport-is of the highest strategic importance. If you look at what the White House and the Kremlin issued afterwards, this is really important, because "Trump asked to convey his wishes of happiness and prosperity to the Russian people, saying that the American people had warm feelings towards Russia and its citizens." This is very, very important, and I think we should really understand that if the United States and Russia can fix their relations, then every other problem can potentially be tackled. Obviously, the second most important issue is that Trump had also promised in the election campaign to reintroduce Glass-Steagall, because everybody knows that the world is still in absolute danger of a repetition of the crash of 2008, which this time would be much, much worse than even the collapse of Lehman Brothers and AIG in September 2008-for the very simple reason that the banks which are too big to fail have grown by 40% or even more, the derivatives have grown, and all the so-called instruments of the central banks have been used up, including quantitative easing, including the whole question of interventions such as bank bail-outs and helicopter money, all of which are in discussion. As a result, the danger of the collapse of the banking system is an absolute threat hanging over the whole world.