Economists, business, union and media speakers from the United States, China, India and Colombia tackled the foreboding imperative “to prevent the starvation of 1 billion people” within the next year, in Panel 2 of the Schiller Institute conference for a new strategic and development architecture for the world.
Ibero-America director Dennis Small presented the Schiller Institute’s new “LaRouche Plan for a New International Economic Architecture,” and discussed the potential of what Primakov dubbed the “Strategic Triangle” countries—China, Russia and India—could lead in its implementation. They have 38% of the world’s population, produce 42% of its wheat, 66% of its steel, and so forth. But they will have to forge an agreement on fixed exchange rates among them and a barrier of capital and exchange controls between their new currency arrangements, and the dollar. Above all—he quoted Lyndon LaRouche directly on this as well as citing Alexander Hamilton—a new monetary agreement rests on the credibility of their intentions jointly to create credit and direct it to higher physical economic productivity in the near-term and generations-long future.
This was strongly reinforced by the presentation of Justin Yifu Lin, formerly World Bank chief economist. He explained that China has long understood that it was obliged as a major economic power to contribute to world development, and intended to do so through the existing—dollar system—international institutions, the IMF, World Bank, and so forth. But these, over decades, have failed to move any significant number of low-income nations to medium-income, or medium-income nations to high-income status. According to the Chinese proverb, “If you want to become rich, first build the roads,” China developed infrastructure projects and the grand Belt and Road Initiative to build them in the developing countries. Lin said the key “sustainable development goal” is “deliver decent jobs to the people,” and this requires good infrastructure above all.
