The Root Causes of the Current Unfolding Systemic Financial Collapse of the West

Sergey Glazyev’s thinking is rooted in an old and powerful intellectual current that derives from a strong tradition in Russia based upon state credit, national sovereignty, large-scale infrastructure, scientific progress, and win-win cooperation.

On September 11th, 2022, the brilliant Russian economist, grand strategist, and leading architect of the emerging new multipolar financial architecture Sergey Glazyev delivered a remarkable memorial address on the life and work of his friend and ally Lyndon LaRouche (1922-2019) who’s 100th birthday was celebrated on September 8th).

Within the powerful 13-minute address, Glazyev outlines the root causes of the current unfolding systemic financial collapse ripping across the western world which his late friend had forecasted well over 30 years ago. He goes further to present a striking program for global recovery and reform of globalization which has taken the form of the Eurasian Economic Union’s integration with the “Eurasian Landbridge” and the broader New Silk Road program which was first unveiled by China in 2013 and which had been advanced by Mr. LaRouche as early as 1994.

The full address should be listened to here:


Although several influential western intellectuals have attempted to take credit for Sergey Glazyev’s strategic thinking over the recent few years, the fact is that Glazyev’s thinking is rooted in an old and powerful intellectual current that derives from a strong, albeit forgotten tradition in Russia based upon state credit, national sovereignty, large scale infrastructure, scientific progress, and most importantly win-win cooperation.

This school of economic science was vibrantly alive in the days of Tsar Alexander II, and the network of nationalist statesmen who rose to prominence during the second half of the 19th century with the most noteworthy being the figure of Russia’s great Finance Minister and first Prime Minister Sergey Witte who spearheaded the construction of the Trans Siberian Railway, envisioned a system of state banks and global networks of railways stretching across Asia, Europe, and the Americas via the Bering Strait.

In the 20th century, this school was disrupted by the Bolshevik color revolution financed by western intelligence operatives and oligarchs but was revived in a unique way under the guidance of the great Russian biogeochemist and leading light of the Academy of Sciences Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945).

It is ironic that this school of dirigists had applied a system once better known as “The American System” advanced by Henry Clay, Friedrich List, Henry C Carey, and Lincoln to the Eurasian context and it is also no small irony that both schools situated their inspiration in the figure of scientist-statesman Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) who not only innovated a “science of economics” in the form of his 1671 Society and Economy and 1672 On the Establishment of a Society of Arts and Sciences but also became a leading advisor to Czar Peter the Great in 1712. In his ‘So You Wish to Learn All About Economics’ published in 1984, LaRouche identified Leibniz as the creator of the field of physical economy as a branch of physics.

It was during his time as Russian Privy Councillor from 1712-1716, that Leibniz became known as the “Solon of Russia”, and was assigned the task of reforming the entire financial and legal administration of Russia. He didn’t stop there, however, but laid out a program for a full national assessment of mining, mineralogical and industrial development which guided generations of Russian nation builders after his death.

Possibly most noteworthy was Leibniz’s setting into motion new scientific institutions that could both encourage the birth of new discoveries and translate those discoveries into ever new forms of technological progress. The most important of these organizations became known as the Russian Academy of Sciences which was finally inaugurated in 1725.

Like Witte, Glazyev, and LaRouche in the 19th-21st centuries, Leibniz established a strategic vision that hinged upon a Russia-China alliance of technological and cultural progress which could feasibly break the deep-rooted oligarchical corruption of Europe and usher in a new age of reason.

In the first issue of the Novissima Sinica (aka: ‘News from China’) published in 1697, Leibniz wrote:

“I CONSIDER IT A SINGULAR PLAN OF THE FATES THAT HUMAN CULTIVATION AND REFINEMENT SHOULD TODAY BE CONCENTRATED, AS IT WERE, IN THE TWO EXTREMES OF OUR CONTINENT, IN EUROPE AND IN CHINA, WHICH ADORNS THE ORIENT AS EUROPE DOES THE OPPOSITE EDGE OF THE EARTH. PERHAPS SUPREME PROVIDENCE HAS ORDAINED SUCH AN ARRANGEMENT, SO THAT AS THE MOST CULTIVATED AND DISTANT PEOPLES STRETCH OUT THEIR ARMS TO EACH OTHER, THOSE IN BETWEEN MAY GRADUALLY BE BROUGHT TO A BETTER WAY OF LIFE. I DO NOT THINK IT AN ACCIDENT THAT THE RUSSIANS, WHOSE VAST REALM CONNECTS EUROPE WITH CHINA AND WHO HOLD SWAY OVER THE DEEP BARBARIAN LANDS OF THE NORTH BY THE SHORE OF THE FROZEN OCEAN, SHOULD BE LED TO THE EMULATION OF OUR WAYS THROUGH THE STRENUOUS EFFORTS OF THEIR PRESENT RULER [PETER I].”

It was this system that co-evolved from a singular source in both Russia and the USA which both Lyndon LaRouche and Glazyev emerged as modern champions in our currently beleaguered age. While some may wish to assert without evidence that Glazyev is a “follower of Modern Monetary Theory”, the facts from Glazyev’s actions, words and policy orientation attest to a very different reality.

It was for this reason that Glazyev first began meeting Lyndon LaRouche directly during the latter’s many trips to Russia in the 1990s after the young economist had demonstrated his consistent principles by resigning from his post as Minister of Foreign and Economic Relations under Boris Yeltsin in 1993 when it became clear that the intention behind the reforms he was expected to oversee were designed to destroy his nation. In his 1999 book Genocide: Russia and the New World Order, Glazyev laid out the two pathways forward for Russia in the 21st century saying:

“Either we passively submit to a suicidal policy of self-destruction and the colonization of Russia, which has been imposed from the outside by deception and graft, or we . . . move to a scientifically grounded strategy for economic growth, improvement of the people’s welfare, and restoration of the spiritual-intellectual strength and the scientific and technical potential of the Russian State.”

Fortunately for Russia and the world, nationalists unwilling to sacrifice their great civilization at the altar of sociopathic financiers managed to get rid of a treacherous alcoholic time bomb and bring in a young troubleshooter named Vladimir Putin.

This vital 1999 reform was pulled-off by Russian patriot and then Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov. Under this new leadership, Sergey Glazyev was made chairman of the Economic Policy Commission of the State Duma. At this time, he re-emphasized his policy outlook of 1999 in his 2001 ‘Dialogue with Lyndon LaRouche’ sponsored by the Schiller Institute which can be viewed here:

Transcript of Sergey Glazyev’s remarks on the 100th Anniversary of Lyndon LaRouche

This year progressive people around the world are observing the centenary of the birth of the brilliant thinker and I wouldn’t hesitate to say the prophet of our time, Lyndon LaRouche.

Unfortunately, we no longer can converse with him, and it’s a pity he did not live to see the day when his warnings about the crash of the world financial system came to pass already 30 years ago.

And perhaps even earlier Lyndon LaRouche drew attention to the fact that the inflation of financial bubbles including derivatives bubbles and the creation of financial pyramid schemes would inevitably bring about the collapse of the world financial system and he proposed to adopt timely measures to avert that collapse. If the leaders of the world’s nations had listened to the voice of Lyndon LaRouche then, perhaps we might have managed to avoid the social upheavals we confront today as a result of the collapse of the world financial and economic system which is based on unlimited emission of the dollar and other western reserve currencies.

These financial bubbles are not getting any smaller. We have seen that attempts to clean them up end in the inflation of new bubbles including pension funds, [and] did not prevent financial bubbles from bloating up again as a result of the limitless emission of the world reserve currencies using the device of so-called “quantitative easing”.

… The world is plunging into chaos in precise accordance with the scenario, the negative scenario that Lyndon LaRouche spoke about in forecasts he made 30 or 40 years ago.

Back then, he proposed that instead of pumping up financial bubbles, the world reserve currency emitter countries, together with their partners and other countries, should invest in building global infrastructure which would reduce the cost of trade, increase the efficiency of international economic ties and overall contribute to raising connectivity worldwide.

So, he viewed the process of globalization as a process of expanding cooperation among countries rather than attempts by some countries to exploit others.

As for the “liberal globalization” that today is leading to the collapse of the world financial system, LaRouche criticized it. He proposed a different model of globalization based on the principles of the physical economy- in particular the famous project which he and his wife Helga Zepp-LaRouche put forward for international discussion: The Eurasian bridge.

This is a splendid and interesting project which now, after many years has begun to be implemented through the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative which we support by linking it with the Eurasian Economic Union.

Lyndon LaRouche looked decades ahead toward the inevitable collapse of their financial expansion policy under which the interests of speculators eclipse the global speculators and world oligarchy which are parasites on the monetary emission of world currencies.

Greatly disliked for this, he was persecuted and faced with imprisonment.

He ran for the US presidency several times and if Lyndon LaRouche had been elected president, the world today would be developing in a stable fashion.

There would not be the growing chaos. There would not be the worldwide wars and provocations which the global oligarchy does in order to write off its debts to Russia as well as to Europe.

The collapse of the financial system could have been avoided if the democratic party organization had supported LaRouche as their presidential candidate many years ago.

But unfortunately, history does not recognize the subjunctive mood or as we tend to put it, “no one is a prophet in his own country.”

LaRouche’s voice was heard very well.

We remember him in practically all the major countries in the world that today are developing successfully- above all India and China.

There are partisans of LaRouche that have used his thoughts and ideas for creating their economic miracles. It is the principles of physical economy championed by LaRouche that today underlie the Chinese economic miracle and are there in the foundations of India’s economic development policy.

The supporters of LaRouche in those countries exert a fruitful, positive, and constructive influence on economic policy-shaping in these leading nations of the new world economic paradigm.

We should not forget the creative legacy of Lyndon LaRouche which demonstrates the interconnection of events taking place today with their roots many centuries ago.

I was always impressed by Lyndon LaRouche’s enormous area of erudition. He saw the parasitical global oligarchy from its origins and traced how those oligarchical families were parasites on trade- first in Venice, then they resettled and continued to build up their financial power through international trade and global speculation in Holland. Then they relocated to England and after that seized control of the political system of the United States.

Lyndon LaRouche saw the totality of world history through the prism of the struggle between the good national interests, the interests of improving the general welfare and the forces of evil.

The world financial oligarchy which hinders countries’ development- which strives to extract speculative super profits from trade and economic cooperation and which deceives the entire world by inflating speculative bubbles and abuses its positions of power in the countries where it dominates the political system. We see how today’s US financial oligarchy is unleashing a hybrid world war up to and including the risk of a nuclear catastrophe for the purpose of holding on to its global hegemony

Lyndon LaRouche’s warnings are coming to pass. It is important that these warnings are not abstract. They are not simply lines on a graph.

I remember the famous triple curve where he showed the growing gap between the size of the world’s real economy and the size of the world financial system.

He was the first to make note of this disproportion which 30 years ago was still not so big.

It could still have been overcome by transforming the excess financial aggregates into the real sector into real investment projects. Now, this is a gigantic abyss. It is impossible today to transform quadrillions of dollars of financial bubbles into investments in the real sector of the economy.

There are simply no mechanisms for this. None were created because the parasitical financial oligarchy which hated LaRouche- which always tried to shut his mouth and persecuted him and tried to keep him locked up, ultimately acquired a monopoly on political power in the United States, and today it uses its political influence in Washington to force all the countries in the world to obey its will. It continues to dominate the world and exert its hegemony by extracting super profits from speculative operations.

Lyndon LaRouche turned out to be right.

We call it an integrated world economic model in which finance capital will be subordinated to the tasks of developing the economy and in which the principles of the physical economy will come to fruition as we can see countries that are taking this path are enjoying success. There is no doubt that the ruling American financial oligarchy is losing the hybrid world war which they have started against all mankind.

It is only regrettable that the price that has to be paid for this will be very high.

That includes the lives being lost as a result of the war that the American and European financial oligarchy organized against Russia on the territory of Ukraine.

We have to muster all our forces to fight that evil and the creative legacy of Lyndon LaRouche helps in this.

Matthew Ehret is a Senior Fellow at American University in Moscow and Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review, a BRI Expert on Tactical talk, and has authored 3 volumes of ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation and can be reached at  ma********@tu******.com

One thought on “The Root Causes of the Current Unfolding Systemic Financial Collapse of the West”

  1. An excellent article by Ehret outlining the structural and systemic basis of the currently unfolding global financial and ecconomic crises. This is one of the rare piece of Western writing that bails out Putin and his reactionary moves to bring strategic stability to the healthily-trimmed Russian space proper and its adjacent Russian-friendly realms while shedding light on the true nature of Putin’s links to Yeltsin. More often than not the Western media has misled people into believing that Yeltsin was Putin’s political mentor, which is clearly not the real case ! By the way, I love your 23rd paragraph on the two kinds of globalization : the benignly constructive kind and the proactively exploitative version which unfortunately has misled the world over the past half a century overtly and covertly.

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