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Glass-Steagall Breakthrough:
Harkin Bill Opens Door to Restoring Economic Sanity

May 20—The increasingly urgent drive to restore the Glass-Steagall Act as the indispensable first step in reversing the accelerating collapse of the U.S. economy hit a dramatic new level on May 16. On the 80th anniversary of the introduction of the original Glass-Steagall bill, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) introduced S. 985 to restore the 1933 legislation and rebuild the wall that had, for some 66 years, separated commercial banking from cancerous investment speculation and brokerage. Although the full text of S. 965 was not available as of this writing, it reportedly matches H.R. 129—The Return to Prudent Banking Act—introduced by Reps. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.), on the first day of the new session in January, which now has 63 sponsors (including Kaptur and Jones). The fact that Harkin's Senate bill mirrors the House bill means that, should the legislation pass in both houses, it would be spared the treacherous watering-down that important legislation often is subjected to in conference committee, and instead go directly to the President's desk intact. Harkin, who has represented Iowa in the U.S. Senate since 1985, after serving 10 years in the House, was one of eight Senators to vote against the financial deregulation that formally abolished Glass-Steagall in 1999. It was that repeal, which came after years of intense pressure from Wall Street and the City of London, and unleashed the orgy of trafficking in bundled subprime mortgages, derivatives, collateralized debt obligations,...
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