PRESS RELEASE
More International Support
For Glass-Steagall Restoration
June 17, 2010 (EIRNS)—The head of the Lega Nord faction in the European Parliament, Mario Borghezio, called for a return to the principles of the Glass-Steagall legislation, in a speech in the European Parliament June 16. According to a release issued by his office, Borghezio asked whether "the decisions which the European institutions are taking to overcome the crisis are coming from the recent secret meeting of the Bilderberg Club, a meeting crowded with high-level European bureaucrats and political leaders. "Instead," Borghezio went on, "Europe should immediately go back to the principles of the Glass-Steagall Act, which is currently being hotly debated in the U.S.A., in order to separate once and for all commercial banks from speculative activity."
Borghezio joins two other Italians—deputy chairman of the International Trade Committee of the European Parliament Cristina Muscardini, and MEP Catia Polidori—in their advocacy of Glass-Steagall. Muscardini has introduced a resolution into the European Parliament calling for Glass-Steagall-style reform in Europe, and is pushing for a public debate by a deadline of June 30.
The latest developments in this international fight are:
- On June 17, Italian Senator Oskar Peterlini introduced a resolution calling on the government to adopt a Glass-Steagall type separation of commercial and investment banking.
- The same day, a one-page article published by the leading Swiss news daily Neue Zuercher Zeitung by Karl Socher, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Innsbruck and a former leading official at the Austrian Ministry of Finance, endorsed a re-institution of the Glass-Steagall system. While this is not Socher's first article in favor of Glass-Steagall, the appearance of his proposal in the Swiss daily gives it great prominence.
