Runaway Inflation or Glass-Steagall?

The second panel dealt more directly with the world food crisis and the urgent need to build infrastructure throughout the world, emphatically including the United States. It opened with an excerpt from a speech by Lyndon LaRouche in September 1994, dealing with precisely that issue.

Diane Sare, who is now running as a LaRouche Party independent candidate for U.S. Senate from New York, spoke on “The Collapse of the West and the Urgent Need To Join the Belt and Road Initiative.” Another candidate speaking was Geoff Young, the Democratic Party nominee for Kentucky’s 6th CD, who is a long-time supporter of the Glass-Steagall Act and other core measures. He spoke of how he won his party primary recently, using the slogan “I will never vote to send billions of dollars to Nazis” and calling for the CIA to be abolished.

Three speakers—from Japan, Germany, and Greece—provided important international perspective. Daisuke Kotegawa, Japan’s former Finance Ministry reorganizer of bankrupt banks, and IMF Executive Director for Japan, gave a punchy talk on, “Don’t Let This World Be Destroyed by Filthy Gamblers Who Call Themselves Wall Street and City of London Bankers.” Dr. Uwe Behrens, a logistics expert and author from Germany, reviewed how the so-called “unipolar world” of London and Washington is severely challenged by China and the BRI. The conflict with Russia, in his view, is only the prelude to the coming conflict between the U.S. and China. Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos, a former Greek Ambassador and former Secretary General of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization (BSEC) spoke on “The Crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Belt and Road Initiative.”

The other panelists focused on agriculture and the world food crisis. Italian economist Nino Galloni, former Director General of the Italian Labor Ministry zeroed in on policies for Africa, and in particular on the means to “Make Africa Self-Sufficient Again”. He reviewed how Western cartels had undermined agriculture in Africa by making the continent grain-import dependent, and preventing development, including even preferred regional cereal grains.

There followed a round table with short presentations by eight American farmers and one fisherman, who called for busting up the food cartels, and ending the financialization of food. They also denounced the pernicious effects of the “green policy”, both in its economic effects and its spread of pessimism and hopelessness.