LaRouche: State of the Union Address, 2003

- Worse Than the Great Depression -
page 3

- Worse Than the Great Depression -

This is a depression which we cannot survive, unless we begin to make certain radical changes right now. Changes which, in spirit, are consistent with what Franklin Roosevelt did, and proposed, during his term as President.

There is a fundamental difference, of several types, between the present depression which is now bursting around us throughout the world. All the leading markets in the world, especially in the Americas and Europe, are reflecting that a depression is fully in progress. It is not, ``Is it going to happen?'' It is not, ``When will the recovery come?'' Under the present system, and the present depression, there will never be a recovery of the United States. Without some sudden, fundamental changes of policy, and reversals of policies accumulated over the period since 1964, {this nation will not survive this crisis}. That is the severity of that challenge now.

One part of that challenge is, essentially, that between the end of the First World War, when the United States was relatively at peak of power internationally, as a nation; until the onset of the Depression in 1929, about 12-14 years, depending on how you calculate it, passed. So that even though the United States was ruined, by the aftermath of some of the worst kick-ins of Teddy Roosevelt's policies, the policies of Wilson--that racist, co-founder of the Ku Klux Klan, and a mental case--and Coolidge; we came into the Great Depression the last time, still a relatively powerful nation. A powerful nation that Roosevelt knew now to revive, and did. Today--since 1964; we're talking about a period of 36-37 years--this is a longer period under which the United States has decayed, as I shall indicate to you what the general nature of that decay is.

This is not a cyclical depression. This is a systemic collapse--of a system. The system which has been built up over the period since 1964; since approximately the time of the official U.S. war in Indochina; and especially since 1971, when Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, and Paul Volcker advised the President--through John Connally, who was then Treasury Secretary--to conduct a collapse of the post-1944 Bretton Woods financial/monetary system. That event, of August 15-16, 1971, was the beginning point of a general disintegration of the world monetary/financial system, which has become an accelerating degeneration of the system especially over the intervals of Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski as the ``managers of Presidents'': the first case, Nixon; and the second case, Brzezinski's management of Carter. And I'll refer to the significance of that a bit more.

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