On October 24, the Hanau-based “Europa Kanton” initiative featured two guest speakers of the Schiller Institute along with three other speakers at a day-long “Future Congress,” the schedule which put the Schiller Institute to give its two representatives—Rainer Apel and Stephan Ossenkopp—their presentations first, to set the tone for the entire event.

Rainer Apel gave a view of the Institute’s two most urgent concerns: the economic-financial crisis of 1971, 1987, 1998 and 2007 not being solved but even expanded through quantitative easing to an extent that already years ago, the ratio of debt to real economy was that of a medicine ball to a cherry. The Institute proposed a return to the Glass-Steagall approach, bank separation, deflation of the speculative bubble and a new credit system—proposals still on the agenda. The other concern of the Institute is the disasters created by geopolitics, which if there is no change and things keep running the way they have done, can lead to a big war fought with nuclear weapons. If that is so, there is no future at all for mankind. Preventing war is not enough, there must be ideas how to build peace, which requires work like a garden does.