Ibero-American News Digest

Collapse of Mexican Industry Calls for LaRouche's Solutions

June 18 (EIRNS)—The April figures released by Mexico's statistical agency, INEGI, reflect the plummeting of Mexico's physical economy, that is now spreading panic among the country's industrialists, who recognize that, as the national Confederation of Industrial Chambers (Concamin) stated in a June 17 response to INEGI's figures, "the worst is yet to come."

As this news service warned would occur, the physical collapse of Mexico's "importer of last resort," the United States, has pulled the plug on what remained of Mexican industry. Auto exports to the U.S. plunged by 40.7% in the first four months of this year, compared to the same period of 2008. In May, national auto production was 39.4% less than May of 2008.

INEGI reports that Mexican manufacturing declined by an 18% annualized rate, worse than after the financial system blew out in December 1994. This includes a 42.1% drop in production of transportation equipment, a 31.9% decline in machinery and equipment production, and a 31.9% drop in communications and computer technology production. For all industry, the annualized collapse rate was 13.2%.

This crisis cries out for Lyndon LaRouche's programmatic solutions—a bankruptcy reorganization and creation of a new credit system to finance such infrastructure projects as the Northwest Hydraulic Project (PLHINO), the tri-state water project that could transform the economy of northern Mexico. (See "A Bill of Materials: How Much Do We Need from the PLHINO; How Much Does the PLHINO Need from Us?," EIR, Oct. 31, 2008.)

This is not what Concamin is calling for, but it is badly shaken by the reality of the collapse. "In the real sector of the economy," it states in its communique, "as well as in the labor market, the worst is yet to come. The storm continues to pummel our productive plant, and weakens our ability to preserve sources of employment.... Factory production, non-petroleum exports, and employment continue in an accelerated decline, corroborating the force of this crisis, and the distance measured between the well-intentioned diagnostics and the harsh reality which companies and their families face."

Concamin's vice president, Arturo Marquez Gonzalez's, call for the government to implement "pending" austerity reforms, however, would exacerbate the very policies which created the crisis.

Usurers Say Mexico Must Kill More People To Ensure 'Stability'

June 13 (EIRNS)—As international financiers were issuing panic warnings, that without immediate and drastic "structural reforms" Mexico faces financial collapse, Finance Minister Agustín Carstens made an unexpected visit to the United States. On June 12, Carstens held a round of meetings with Wall Street financial sharks, the IMF, the Inter-American Development Bank, the New York Federal Reserve, and the three major credit rating agencies. Carstens was #3 at the IMF, before joining the Calderón government.

Fitch Ratings, Standard & Poors, and Moody's are all threatening to downgrade Mexico's sovereign debt, unless President Felipe Calderón agrees to impose harsh fiscal austerity as soon as the mid-term legislative elections are over in early July. And if Calderón can't get the reform passed, he'd better come up with an acceptable "Plan B" to avoid a downgrade, Fitch threatened on June 9.

IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned from Montreal the same day, that Mexico is in danger of defaulting on its debt payments because of falling revenues and insufficient financing. The government should have had more foresight, he said, and imposed "reforms" before the crisis hit. The IMF stepped in with a $47 billion credit line to help Mexico, he added, but on the condition that austerity be imposed. Otherwise, the country could explode in a social upheaval, that would also destabilize the surrounding region.

In the middle of a flu pandemic, a war against the drug cartels, and a disintegrating physical economy, the only thing that would guarantee more social upheaval in Mexico would be the imposition of the insane reforms these bloodsuckers demand.

LaRouche Association Calls for Colombia To Break with Britain's NICE

June 16 (EIRNS)—The Lyndon LaRouche Association of Colombia today issued a call to arms to their fellow Colombians, to mobilize against the British Nazis who have been hired to oversee the "reform" of their nation's Mandatory Health Plan, from Britain's not-NICE National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

Informing Colombians of LaRouche's war to stop President Obama from imposing genocidal cuts in health care, modeled on the same NICE now threatening Colombia, the LaRouche Association warns that, "in Britain itself, NICE has become the instrument of a dictatorship which decides who lives and who dies, in the same way that the T-4 Program, entitled 'Destruction of Lives Not Worth Living,' signed by Hitler in July 1939, created a 'technical' corps who decided who lived and who died....

The LaRouche Association reports what many Colombians are unaware of:

"At the request of the Social Protection Ministry of Colombia, the British NICE has seized control of the reform of Colombia's Mandatory Health Plan (POS). In July 2008, the Constitutional Court ordered the government to reform the POS, both to unify it, but also to have all the medications and surgical procedures which Colombians require included under it. More than 90,000 lawsuits a year seeking redress from the Constitutional Court—that is, one-third of all such lawsuits to secure a fundamental right, called tutelas—are brought by patients who have been denied medicines or medical treatment under various pretexts, particularly the argument that "they are not included in the POS....

"In short, during the past 15 years under Law 100, health sector resources being funneled into the coffers of the private financial entities increased, health 'coverage' nominally increased, but quality and attention to patients—who are no longer patients, but rather 'clients'—decreased. In reality, doctors were turned into appendages of accountants and financiers; the latter, to maximize profits in the shortest time possible, have slashed the services and procedures needed by patients....

"To try to evade its obligation to defend the general welfare of the Colombian people, in particular in the area of health, the government has, through the Social Protection Ministry, hired Britain's NICE to 'advise' that reform. All patriots must go on the alert, and mobilize to eliminate this intervention on the part of the British Empire in the management of Colombian health services....

"It is time we again mobilize against the Nazis and their British empire of usury. This time, to purge them from the political and economic lives of nations, once and for all."