What is there to interest English-speaking readers in a Press Conference held by the 'President of the United States of Europe'?

The 'President of the United States of Europe' is a world citizen who claims to stand for 'universal brotherhood'. The new money that he proposes - the ECU - places all the peoples of the world on the same footing, with regard to 'added value'. He announces the creation of a world without frontiers, in which all resources would be fairly shared. This marked the irreversible end of 'predatory capitalism', an inhuman economic doctrine based on the exploitation of man by man, and of man by machine, to the detriment of ecological resources and to the survival of the human race.

Predatory capitalism can be seen as the apotheosis of two opposing yet complementary historic movements - national capitalism (barbaric capitalism) and national socialism (barbaric socialism) - these two inhuman, nationalistic visions of society which have made the world what it is today - a battlefield between peoples and between generations, a world of violence in which injustice and crime are law and impose their single, alienating attitude.

This book is an extract from a much longer novel ('Amanda, Secret Mission', which is available, in French only, on the Web). It reflects the thoughts of a law-maker whose concern is, above all, to put an end to the rule of crime, corruption and hypocrisy at the highest levels of the State. It is the struggle of a man thirsting for true liberty, equality and brotherhood. This novel is addressed to all those who are concerned with their future, with their people's future and with the future of civilization. It is, above all, the sum of fundamental reflections which suggest concrete answers to the anguish of thousands of millions of human beings whom the rich countries have excluded because 'there are too many of them on this earth'. Beyond the economy, it is the notion of the 'rights of man'; the rich countries and the spirit of their laws that are in the dock. The only right that governs the world of barbarity is that of money and those who possess it. This is a right they intend to keep by force of arms, thus by a form of violence that engenders another - that of international terrorism and ethnic conflict.

The Bretton Woods Conference of July 1944 had already sought a solution to the imperative need to replace gold by some other form of universal international money. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, to which the Conference gave birth, did nothing to modify the old rules of the economy. Lord Keynes regarded it as a 'law of nature' that one man's riches meant another man's poverty. The attempt to create a new standard of parity between gold and the dollar failed owing to the lack of discipline of the American financiers. Finally, the supremacy of the dollar was recognized, a supremacy based on no consideration other than the arbitrary one of serving its own interests. In so doing it made the U.S.A. the 'policeman' of the economic world - a role with which the people of the planet had difficulty in coming to terms.

The theory of the ECU (Equivalent Currency Unit) is revolutionary and aims 'to take the world capitalist bull by the horns'. The ECU has nothing in common with any form of traditional money. Liberal economists have always maintained that the value of a currency is determined solely from the free interplay of demand and supply. With the ECU, this value is determined solely by the qualitative value of the products or services offered on the market. The ECU theory is both scientific and liberal, because, for the first time, it is integrated into the metric system. The value added is incorporated with the work invested and thus becomes quantifiable. This quantification of the quantitative value takes nothing away from the interplay of supply and demand since those products or services best adapted to demand will continue to impose themselves freely on the market. However, the opportunities open to the various players on the economic scene become equal. With consumption of energy becoming an integral part of the formation of prices, any wastage of power will be considered to be a handicap in competitive terms. The ECU is, therefore, an ecologically sound monetary standard which penalizes any form of waste of energy.

The 'Press Conference of the President of the United States of Europe' is a philosophical vision of the economy which is addressed to all those who seek 'paradise on earth', and especially to the young who ask if there is still a place in this world where life is worth living.