July 24-The LaRouche Political Action Committee issued an emergency call July 21, for a mobilization to pre-empt the chaos and devastation that will result across the Americas, Europe, and beyond, if measures are not taken immediately to initiate a Glass-Steagall re-organization of banking and credit, and proceed to a full economic recovery program as defined in Lyndon LaRouche's June 10, 2010 proposal, Four New Laws to Save the U.S.A. Now! Not an Option: An Immediate Necessity. This has now become a matter of life or death. In a discussion with associates on July 20, Mr. LaRouche said, "Wall Street is the problem. This is a key issue which must be pushed to the top, to be followed through, to prevent this danger to the economy as a whole." As this issue goes to press, trigger points are lying in wait throughout the trans-Atlantic financial system, any one of which is capable of igniting and exploding trillions in toxic debt and unpayable claims-bringing down the entire financial system, and the physical economy with it. They include everything from the U.S. consumer debt bubble, to bundled auto loans, to corporate bad debt, and quadrillions of dollars of exotic financial derivative "products." Perched at the top of this financial/monetarist nightmare is the Wall Street/City of London crowd, insisting that nothing needs to be done. They have lied-and continue to lie-that "we are past" the 2007-2008 crisis, that the "system is sound." Nothing could be further from the truth. In a recent discussion, Helga Zepp-LaRouche stressed that not only did the massive 2008 bail-out solve nothing-but it actually transitioned the system into a mode of accelerated looting of the population in the United States and Europe-looting the American and European people in a desperate attempt to try to maintain and continue this financial bubble. We are now reaching a new inflection point in that crisis. On any given day, look at the headline reports of the reality of the fragility of this system, and of the mass suffering it's causing! In Italy at present, there is a criminal European Union "management" process of the so-called banking crisis under way, in which the EU is ordering a massive destruction of families' resources. Within the past few days, financial experts have warned that 16 out of 19 Italian banks that were tested, currently fail to meet the EU standards regarding non-performing loans. Instead of subjecting the Italian banks to Glass-Steagall reorganization (separating regular commercial banking from speculative practices), the EU has decreed a sell-off of the banks' non-performing loans (NPLs), in such a way as to drastically devalue the collateral behind them, which is often household and industrial real estate. Out of 88 billion euros of such collateral, an estimated 63 billion euros is expected to vaporize. This means the impoverishment of millions of families and businesses. Take the example of Texas: On July 11, the Houston Chronicle reported that corporate defaults in Texas are higher today than they were during the 2008-2009 crisis. This includes some singular situations. One event described as "unheard of," was the collapse of a Houston-based private equity fund called EnerVest, Limited, whose $2 billion valuation fell all the way down to zero. Prior to this, when a private equity fund went under, losses would typically max out at 25%. Here, we had a 100% loss. In its coverage, the Wall Street Journal interviewed experts who warned of the same danger at several other energy-focused funds. Nationally, corporate default rates have continued to rise throughout 2016 and 2017. Auto loan delinquencies are now at a rate comparable to what mortgage delinquencies were in 2006, just prior to the mortgage bubble collapse. And on top of all of this debt lies a mountain of speculative "multiplier" contracts and "bundled securities."
