PRESS RELEASE
More Glass-Steagall Support from Several Quarters
April 10, 2017 (EIRNS)—A fifth Senator, Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, backed the "21st Century Glass-Steagall Act", S. 881, the day after it was introduced by the bipartisan combination of Senators Elizabeth Warren, John McCain, Maria Cantwell, and Angus King.
At the same time the Credit Union Times, the leading publication of the 7,700-plus credit unions around the country with 100 million members and 7% of American deposits, on April 7 published coverage under the headline "New Glass-Steagall Bill Pushed by Senators Warren, McCain." The long article basically tracks the sponsors’ press release of April 6 at length, including the quotations from all four Senators.
London Financial Times on April 10 published an "Inside Business" column by Patrick Jenkins, headlined "The Tangled Web of Goldman Sachs, Gary Cohn and Glass-Steagall." The column includes a very long wind-up about the "surprise" of Trump Administration official Gary Cohn’s favorable comment on Glass-Steagall; the immediately following Senate introduction of the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act; and the possible motivations of Goldman Sachs—of which Cohn was president—in supporting a Glass-Steagall restoration.
But it concludes that rather than imitating Britain’s "ring-fencing" bank regulation, the U.S. legislation might push Britain to move to Glass-Steagall.
"Mr. Trump would find a way to ensure the likes of Barclays and Deutsche Bank were not advantaged. Some believe that new US legislation could in fact embolden policymakers elsewhere in the world to follow suit. Who knows? Britain’s ringfencing rules, which put a safety barrier around mainstream high-street banking activity and must be implemented by January 2019, could just be a prelude to a full-blown U.K. version of Glass-Steagall."
