The following is a slightly edited transcript of the remarks delivered by Dennis Small, EIR’s Ibero-America Intelligence Director, to the 169th weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition, on Aug. 28, 2026, including his response to one question.

When you look at the state of the U.S. and world economy, you end up wishing that people had listened to Lyndon LaRouche many, many decades ago; we really wouldn’t be in this situation had we done so.

You may have noticed that President Donald Trump promised and guaranteed that interest rates would drop very significantly under his Presidency. And you probably also saw that the opposite has happened. You probably also recall that he said he would reduce the government budget deficit and thereby lower the government debt, and the opposite has happened. He also said he would be bombing Iran back to the Stone Age unless they heeled, and neither has occurred.

And then, of course, there was the guarantee that Russia would be obliterated by the “nuclear option” of throwing them out of the SWIFT financial system information exchange, and that didn’t happen to Russia, either. True, that one wasn’t Trump; it was President Joe Biden, but it’s the same point, exactly the same thing.

All of this reminds me of Lyndon LaRouche’s story about the guy who buys an old car, and when he goes to drive it, he turns the steering wheel to the right, and the car accelerates. And then he jams it into reverse, and the car accelerates and goes over the cliff.

Now, that’s the situation we’re facing in the global financial system today. LaRouche’s point was not that the workings of a car are intrinsically unknowable. His point was that the current driver has absolutely no idea how the car works, and therefore does everything wrong. And that what is required, in fact, is that—we have a very defective car, and we need to completely replace it.

If that doesn’t happen, the current driver—who doesn’t know what he’s doing and doesn’t know how the car works—is going to take the car over the edge of the precipice, with the entire population of the world on it.