Yakunin: LaRouche's Warnings Were Crucial for Russian Railways

Vladimir Yakunin, the CEO of Russian Railways and a long-time associate of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, said in an October 16 interview with the Baltic Information Agency (BaltInfo), that American economist Lyndon LaRouche's warnings of a systemic global crisis prepared him and his company for what has happened during the past three years.

Yakunin was asked, "How does Russian Railways view the world crisis — as an annoying event, or as an incentive to make bold decisions and an economic and technological breakthrough?" He replied:

"In 2006, already, the American economist Lyndon LaRouche, who uses non-traditional systems in analyzing the economic situation, warned that the crisis had already begun. Few people listened to him, but we were among those few. Now we are trying to keep our hand on the pulse. Last year Russian Railways set up an anti-crisis committee, which monitors the situation in the carriage market and inside our company on a daily basis."

One year ago already, in an October 2, 2008, interview in the business daily Kommersant, Yakunin said he had known of the coming crisis years in advance, because of the warning he received from LaRouche. In February of this year, Yakunin took the same message to a conference at the London School of Economics, where he again named LaRouche as the "very rare" economist who predicted the collapse of the world financial bubble.

Yakunin is co-founder of the World Public Forum - Dialogue of Civilizations, known as the Rhodes Forum. LaRouche and his wife, Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche, were speakers at the 7th annual Rhodes Forum, held last week.

In his BaltInfo interview, Yakunin said that Russian Railways' top priority today is to "save the investment program." He emphasized that the second stage of the Russian government's Strategy for the Development of Rail Transport in the Russian Federation to 2030, covering the period 2016-2030, "provides for rapid expansion of the rail network and the creation of infrastructure conditions for the development of new economic growth spots in the country, while achieving world-class levels of technological development in rail." As detailed in EIR of September 7, 2007, the Strategy includes stretches of high-speed rail in key areas of European Russia, Siberia, and the Far East; strategic freight lines, oriented to Siberian resource development for domestic use as well as export; and a line to Russia's coast on the Bering Strait, facing Alaska, location of a potential multi-purpose tunnel connection to the United States and all of the Americas.