The Lead

Why We Remember Lyndon LaRouche on August 15

by Dennis Small (EIRNS) — Aug. 15, 2024

Today is the 53rd anniversary of the fateful Aug. 15, 1971 televised policy speech by President Richard Nixon which announced the end of the fixed-rate international financial system, and the beginning of the era of runaway speculative destruction of the world economy. We take a step back from our daily updates on the strategic situation—which continues to devolve rapidly towards threatened thermonuclear war—to focus renewed attention on the cause of the global military, financial and cultural crises, which Lyndon LaRouche uniquely forecast over a half-century ago.

On Aug. 14, 2021, the LaRouche Legacy Foundation issued an invitation to its conference “On the 50th Anniversary of LaRouche’s Stunning Forecast of August 15, 1971: So, Are You Finally Willing To Learn Economics?"}, which read in part:

“On August 15, 1971, Nixon delivered a dramatic 18-minute national television address in which he announced:

“1. The dollar was being taken off the gold exchange standard: the dollar would no longer be redeemable in gold;

“2. A floating exchange rate system would replace the existing fixed exchange rate international monetary system;

“3. A temporary wage and price freeze would be instituted in the U.S., which quickly became Phase I, II and III drastic austerity measures. Although Nixon announced these measures purportedly to rein in financial speculation against the dollar, they in fact opened the floodgates to the most massive, lengthy speculative binge in the history of mankind, coupled with physical economic collapse—which continues to this day.

“The August 15, 1971 announcement was the most far-reaching and catastrophic economic policy decision of the 20th century in terms of its consequences down to the present. One economist, and one economist alone, called it. He warned that it was coming and explained what it meant within hours of its announcement. That man was Lyndon LaRouche.

“LaRouche spent the next five decades warning that, if those policies were continued, the world would head into a systemic breakdown crisis and the likelihood of fascist economic policies. All the while he presented detailed programs to reverse the crisis, based on the idea of peace through development and on fostering the productive powers of labor of every person on the planet.

“For this, LaRouche was reviled and unjustly imprisoned for five years. His policies were not implemented in the trans-Atlantic sector, and the planet today is paying the price for that folly in the form of a hyperinflationary blowout, an uncontrolled and deadly pandemic, and the danger of thermonuclear war.”

LaRouche was right then, and he and his wife Helga are right now. You are invited to join the 63rd weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition on Aug. 16 at 11 a.m. ET, to further the cause of organizing a new international security and development architecture.