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The most fanatical defenders of and believers in the market have converted it into a new religion. This is how the theology of the market emerged. Its academics, more than scientists, are theologians; for them, it is a question of faith. Out of respect for the genuine religions practiced honestly by billions of people throughout the world and out of respect for genuine theologians, we could simply add that the theology of the market is sectarian, fundamentalist and not ecumenical.

For many other reasons, the current world order is unsustainable. A biotechnologist would say that its genetic map contains numerous genes that lead to its own destruction.

New and unsuspected phenomena are emerging, ones which escape the control of governments and international financial institutions. It is no longer merely a matter of the artificial creation of fabulous wealth with no relation to the real economy. Such is the case of the hundreds of new multimillionaires who have emerged over recent years through the growth in the price of shares on the U.S. stock markets, like a giant balloon that inflates to absurd proportions with the serious risk that it will explode sooner or later. That is what happened in 1929, setting off a deep depression which lasted a decade.

In August of last year, the simple financial crisis in Russia, which produces on 2% of the world's gross domestic product, caused the Dow Jones industrial average, which is the New York stock market's top indicator, to drop 512 points in one day. Panic set in, threatened to cause a crisis like that of Southeast Asia in Latin America and thereby seriously threatened the U.S. economy. They have barely been able to hold off disaster until now. The stocks traded on these stock exchanges include the savings and pension funds of 50% of U.S. citizens. At the time of the 1929 crisis, that figure was only 5%, and there were numerous suicides.

In a globalized world, what happens in any one place has immediate repercussions on the rest of the planet. The recent scare was considerable. The resources of the world's wealthiest countries, summoned together by the United States, were mobilized to head off or attenuate the disaster. Nevertheless, they want to maintain Russia on the brink of the abyss, and are demanding unnecessarily tough conditions from Brazil. The International Monetary Fund has not moved a millimeter from its fundamentalist principles. The World Bank has rebelled and denounced the situation.

Everyone is talking about an international financial crisis; the only ones who haven't caught on are the citizens of the United States. They are spending more than ever, and their savings are less than zero. They're not concerned that their transnationals invest other people's money. Nor does it matter that the trade deficit continues to grow and has now reached 240 billion. They enjoy the privileges of the empire that prints the currency of the world's reserves. The speculators seek refuge in their treasury bonds en masse when there is a crisis. Because the domestic market is large and more money is being spent, the economy appears to be in good shape, although the profits of the corporations have decreased. Megamergers, euphoria; stock prices rise once again. They've gone back to playing Russian roulette. Everything will continue to go well eternally. The system's theoreticians have discovered the philosopher's stone. All points of access are intercepted to keep out the ghosts that could destroy the dream. It is no longer impossible to square the circle. There will never be a crisis.

But is the balloon that continues inflating the only threat and the only speculative gamble? Another phenomenon that is reaching ever more fabulous and uncontrollable proportions is that of speculative operations involving currencies. These operations now represent a minimum of a trillion dollars a day. Some claim it to be 1.5 trillion. Scarcely 14 years ago, this figure was only 150 billion dollars a year. There could be confusion regarding the figures. It is difficult to express them, and even more so to translate them from English to Spanish. What we call a billion in Spanish, that is, a million million, is a trillion in North American English. On the other hand, a billion in North American English is a thousand million in Spanish. Now they have come up with the milliard, which means a thousand million in both Spanish and English. These language difficulties demonstrate how difficult it is to follow and comprehend the fabulous figures that reflect the degree of speculation in the current world economic order. The immense majority of the world's nations pay for it with the perennial risk of ruin. The slightest carelessness can lead the speculators to attack, devaluating the currency in any one of these nations, and liquidating their hard currency reserves, built up over decades perhaps, in a matter of days. The world order has created the conditions for this. Absolutely no one is or can be safe. The wolves, grouped in packs and aided by computer programs, know where to attack, when to attack and why to attack.

THERE ARE WORDS THAT CANNOT BE PRONOUNCED IN THE TEMPLE
OF THE FANATICS OF THE IMPOSED WORLD ORDER

Fourteen years ago, when this speculation was 2000 times less, a Nobel laureate in economics proposed a 1% tax on every speculative operation of this kind. Today the total that would have been generated through this 1% would be sufficient to develop all of the countries of the Third World. It would be a way of regulating and holding back this harmful speculation. But, regulate? This would clash with the purest fundamentalist doctrine. There are words that cannot be pronounced in the temple of the fanatics of the imposed world order. For example: regulation, public enterprise, economic development program, any minimal form of state planning, influence or participation in the economic area. All of this disturbs the idyllic dream of the free market and private enterprise paradise. Everything should be deregulated, even the labor market. Unemployment benefits should be reduced to the bare minimum, so as not to support "bums" and "freeloaders." The pension system should be restructured and privatized. The state should only concern itself with the police and the army, to maintain order, repress protest and wage war. It is not even permissible for it to participate in any way in the monetary policies of the central bank; this must be absolutely independent. Louis XIV would truly suffer, because if he said "I am the state," today he would have to add, "I am absolutely nothing."

Apart from the frightful speculation with currencies, there has been an accelerated and unbelievable growth in so-called hedge funds and the derivatives market, another rather new term. I won't try to explain it. It's complicated. It would take a lot of time. I'll simply say that it is an additional system of speculative gambling, another enormous casino where the players bet anything and everything, based on sophisticated risk calculations generated by computers, high-level programmers and economic experts. They exploit insecurity and use the money in the banks' savings accounts. They have practically no restrictions, make huge profits and can provoke disasters.

The fact that the current economic order is unsustainable is evidenced by the very vulnerability and weakness of the system, which has turned the planet into a gigantic casino, and turned millions of citizens and sometimes even entire societies into gamblers, adulterating the function of money and of investments, given that they pursue neither the production nor the growth of the world's wealth, but rather a means to make money with money. Such a deformation will inevitably lead the world economy towards disaster.

A recent incident, which took place in the United States, has been the source of scandal and profound concern. One of the hedge funds that I mentioned and tried to explain in essence, precisely the most famous one in the United States, Long Term Capital Management, which has two Nobel laureates in economy and some of the best computer programmers in the world, and annual profits of over 30%, was on the verge of bankruptcy, which would have had, it would seem, incalculable consequences.

Backed by the prestige it had acquired and depending blindly in the infallibility of its famed programmers and Nobel Prize winners in economics, with a fund of only 4.5 million dollars, it mobilized funds from 75 different banks, totaling 120 billion dollars, for its speculative operations; that is, it obtained over 25 dollars in savings for every dollar of its own funds. That procedure broke all the parameters and supposed financial practices. The calculations and the programs failed. The losses were considerable; and bankruptcy - which is a dramatic word in this sphere - was inevitable. It was just a matter of days. The U.S. Federal Reserve System went to the rescue of the hedge fund, contradicting all the tenets of the United States and neoliberal philosophy, given that this was considered irresponsible behavior on the part of that kind of institution. According to established principles, the hedge fund had to go bankrupt, the law of the market would teach it a lesson by imposing the relevant corrective. A scandal broke out. The Senate summoned Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board; he was called on to make a statement. This senior official, who came from Wall Street, is seen as one of the most expert and eminent figures in the U.S. economy. The principal merit for the current administration's economic success is attributed to him and he is currently enjoying special praise in financial and press circles as the man who halted the stock market crisis in the United States, by lowering interest rates three times in succession. After the president, he is viewed as the most important person in the country. Well, this famous and esteemed chairman of the Federal Reserve System informed the Senate that, if the hedge fund wasn't saved, it would lead to an economic catastrophe which would affect the United States and the entire world.

Where is the solidity of an economic order in which the action, qualified as adventurous and irresponsible, of a speculative institution which possessed a mere 4.5 billion dollars could lead the United States and the world to an economic disaster?

When a weakness and an immunological failure of such magnitude is perceived within the system, it could be diagnosed as suffering from something very similar to AIDS.

I don't wish to put forward any more arguments. Many other problems exist within the world economy. The prevailing order flip-flops between inflation, recession, deflation, potential overproduction crises, sustained slumps of basic products. Countries as immensely rich as Saudi Arabia now have budget and trade deficits, even through every day they export eight million barrels of oil. Optimistic growth forecasts are evaporating. No one has the slightest idea of how to solve the problems of the Third World. What capital goods, technology, distribution networks, export credits do they have to seek markets, compete and export? Where are the consumers of their products? How are the resources to be found for health care in Africa, where 22 million HIV-positive persons would require, at current prices, 200 billion dollars every year to control one sole disease? How many will die before a protective vaccine or a medicine is found to eliminate the disease?

HOPEFULLY SOLUTIONS WON'T BE FOUND AS A RESULT OF ECONOMIC CRISES

The world needs some leadership to confront its current realities. There are already six billion inhabitants on the planet. It is virtually certain that in just 50 years' time there will be 9.5 billion. Guaranteeing food, health care, education, employment, clothing, footwear, homes, drinking water, electricity and transportation for such an extraordinary number of persons who will be living precisely in the poorest countries will be a colossal challenge. First, consumption standards will have to be defined. We cannot continue introducing the tastes and ways of life inspired by the industrialized societies' wasteful model, which would be suicidal in addition to being impossible.

The world's development must be programmed. That task cannot remain in the hands of the transnationals and left up to the blind and chaotic laws of the market. The United Nations is a good basis for this task, since it has a lot of information and experience; we must strive to make it more democratic, to put an end to the Security Council's dictatorship, and the dictatorship within the Council itself, or at least to increase the number of its permanent members so that the Third World is properly represented, with all the prerogatives enjoyed by the current members and changing the rules on decision making. Furthermore, the functions and authority of the General Assembly must be broadened.

Hopefully solutions won't be found as a result of economic crises. Billions of people in the Third World would be affected. An elemental awareness of the technological realities and the destructive power of modern weapons obliges us to think about the duty to prevent the inevitable conflicts of interest from leading to bloody wars.

The existence of a single superpower, of a global and asphyxiating economic order, makes it difficult - perhaps impossible - for even a revolution such as ours to survive, if it had been born today instead of when if could count on a source of support, in a world which was then bipolar. Because of that support, our country had the necessary time to develop an invincible capacity for resistance and to make known, in the international arena, the strong influence of its example and heroism, in order to carry out a great battle of ideas in all forums.

Peoples will keep on struggling, the masses will play an important and decisive role in those struggles, which in essence will be their response to the poverty and suffering to which they have been subjected, and thousands of creative and ingenious forms of pressure and political action will emerge. Many governments will be destabilized by economic crises and the absence of solutions within the established international economic system.

We are living though a stage in which events move more quickly than consciousness of the realities under which we suffer. We must sow ideas and unmask deceit, sophism and hypocrisy, using methods and means which counteract the disinformation and institutionalized lies. The experience of 40 years of slander falling upon Cuba like torrential rain has taught us to trust the people's instincts and intelligence.

The European countries have given the world a good example of what can be achieved through the use of reason and intelligence. After centuries of internecine wars, they understood that even though they were wealthy industrialized countries, they couldn't survive isolated from one another. Soros, a well-known personality in the world of finance, and his group, in a speculative assault, brought Britain to its knees, despite the fact that Britain was once the head of a great empire, the undisputed queen of finances and the former ruler of the world's reserve currency, a role now played by the dollar and the United States.

The franc, peseta and lira also suffered the damage wrought by speculation. The dollar and the euro are keeping watch over one another. The dollar now faces a prospective adversary. The United States is anxiously wagering that the new currency will struggle and fail. We are keeping a close eye on events.

Anguish, uncertainty and doubt lead some to seek out eclectic alternatives. The world, nevertheless, has no other alternative to neoliberal globalization, which is dehumanizing, morally and socially indefensible, and ecologically and economically unsustainable, than a fair distribution of the riches that human beings are capable of creating with their dedicated labor and fertile intelligence. May there be an end to the tyranny of an order that imposes blind, anarchic and chaotic principles, that is leading the human species towards the abyss. May nature be saved. May national identities be preserved, and the cultures of all nations protected. May equality, fraternity, and with them, true liberty, prevail. The unfathomable differences between the rich and poor within each country and between countries cannot continue growing. They must, on the contrary, progressively diminish until they disappear someday. May differences be determined by merit, capacity, creative spirit, and what each individual actually contributes to the welfare of humanity, as opposed to theft, speculation, and the exploitation of the weakest. May humanism be genuinely practiced, with concrete actions, and not hypocritical slogans.

TODAY'S STRUGGLE IS TOUGH AND DIFFICULT

Dear compatriots:

The nation that is waging the heroic battle of the special period to save the homeland, the Revolution and the conquests of socialism is advancing irrepressibly towards its goals, in the same way that the fighters led by Camilo and Che advanced from the Sierra Maestra to the Escambray. As Mella said, the future must always be better. Let's confirm this with the goals we have set ourselves for 1999. Let's consolidate and strengthen, work, struggle and fight with the spirit with which our heroic compatriots fought in Uvero, in the glorious days of the major enemy offensive, in the battles and the events we have recalled today. We have left behind the setback in Alegría de Pío, we have passed through Cinco Palmas, we have gathered forces, and now we are capable of triumph, just as 300 triumphed over 10,000; we are now much stronger, and certain of victory. (APPLAUSE)

To all of our compatriots, and especially the young, I assure you that the next 40 years will be decisive for the world. Before you there are tasks that are incomparably more complex and difficult. New glorious goals await you; the honor of being Cuban revolutionaries demands it. We will struggle for our nation and for humanity. And our voice can reach and will reach very far away.

Today's struggle is tough and difficult. In the ideological war, as in armed battles, there are also casualties. Not everyone has the courage to withstand these tough times and difficult conditions.

I was recalling today that in the midst of the war, in the midst of the bombings and countless deprivations, of all the young volunteers who entered the school, one in ten was able to withstand it; but that one was worth ten, a hundred, a thousand. By strengthening awareness, forming character, educating the young in the difficult school of life in our era, sowing solid ideas, using arguments that are irrefutable, preaching through example and trusting in the honor of humankind, we can ensure that for every ten, nine remain in their battle posts alongside the flag, the Revolution and the homeland. (APPLAUSE)

Socialism or death!

Patria o muerte

Venceremos!

(OVATION)