Accra, May 20, GNA - Globalisation is a predatory form of capitalism that has shown itself beyond all doubts to be bankrupt on every front, whether economic, financial or moral, Schiller Institute's Chairwoman, Helga Zepp-LaRouche has said.

An appeal being circulated around the world, a copy of which was made available to Ghana News Agency, said: "The paradigm shift of the last four decades, a period in which the world economy increasingly abandoned manufacturing and gave itself over untrammelled speculation, now draws to an end.

"The world financial system is about to implode. Hanging over a gross production worldwide of mere 40 trillion dollars and accumulated physical capital, is a gigantic bubble umpteen times that size -2,000 trillion dollars worth of financial turnover.

"The impending bankruptcy of General Motors and potentially, of the entire United States automobile industry, is but one of many factors that could well lead to the collapse of US dollar, and thereby, that of the entire financial system."

To prevent the world's people from suffering the untold harm that the breakdown of the system would unleash, a number of people have appended their signature to demand an emergency conference to be convened to agree upon a new financial architecture along the lines of the Bretton Woods System launched at Franklin D. Roosevelt's initiative in 1944.

The signatories: "Stress that Lyndon La Rouche is the Economist, who has best grasped the causes of the systemic crisis, and who has moreover, put forward a package of measures that would adequately deal with it - a new Bretton Woods Agreement." They further stressed that the Italian Chamber of Deputies has taken up LaRouche's proposal, and on 6 April 2005, voted up a resolution calling for "an international conference at Heads of State level, in order to lay the basis for a new and just world monetary and financial system".

The signatories listed a number of measures that should be implemented to alter the mistaken course that had been followed since President Richard Nixon did away with fixed exchange-rates in 1971, a course that had led to the present upsurge of a grotesque and predatory form of capitalism, thanks to unchecked "globalisation", after the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

The measures include: The immediate re-establishment of fixed exchange rates; enactment of a treaty between governments, forbidding speculation in derivative products; debts should either be cancelled or reorganised; fresh credit lines should be opened by States to create full employment by investing in critical infrastructure and technological innovations.

Others include the building of the Euro-Asian Land-Bridge, as the keystone for rebuilding the world economy to bring about not only a new economic miracle but also peace in the 21st Century.

The statement said: "A new Peace of Westphalia will ensure that for no less than the coming half-century, raw materials shall be extracted and processed for the benefit of every nation on this Planet."

It said: "It is Man, who must stand at the centre of the economy, and accordingly, the economy must serve the common weal. The purpose of a new economic order is to guarantee the inalienable rights of Man." The 57 signatories include Herbert Hoen, Head of Factory Council, Johnson Controls Headliner, Saar, Germany; Manfred Arnold, Head of Kamenz District of the German Community for Justice; Prof Sam Aluko, Former Chief Economic Advisor to the Nigerian President, Akure, Nigeria and a number of Deputies of the Italian Parliament.