PRESS RELEASE
More Reports of Trump and Glass-Steagall: Where Is His Party?
May 12, 2017 (EIRNS)—Following Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s strong affirmation of readiness to work with President Trump on a new Glass-Steagall banking separation bill—indeed, she said she was already in discussions with the Administration on it—the question must be asked, why aren’t Congressional Republicans willing to work with the Republican President on Glass-Steagall?
Republican House Financial Services chair Jeb Hensarling’s haughty rejection of Glass-Steagall in a Bloomberg interview on May 10, put him in direct opposition President Trump. The President has repeatedly said publicly, and reportedly more forcefully in private discussion and through his team, that he wants to see Glass-Steagall advance in Congress. But 53 Democrats, two Independents and just three Republicans have sponsored Glass-Steagall in the House and Senate this session, to date.
The GOP leadership’s opposition has made them a Wall Street-funded blockade against the President on regulation of banks. The Wall Street giant megabanks, combining a huge deposit base with arrant speculation, don’t want simpler, more effective regulation—Glass-Steagall, as Senator Warren made clear. They want no regulation at all of their unsound, often immoral and sometimes illegal practices. Representative Hensarling and his leadership colleagues are trying to deliver that, instead of following their Party’s platform and their Party’s President pointing to Glass-Steagall.
Examples of the incorrigible nature of the Wall Street and London megabanks conduct, if not broken up, continue to roll in. The Times of London reported Lloyds Bank has been forced to settle, and pay $90 million in penalties so far, in yet another mis-selling scandal. This one, from 2009-2011, involved cross-selling and mis-selling complex securities to bank depositors—after the bank, without being broken up, was nationalized!
And American Banker reported today that the disgraceful high-pressure cross-selling of securities to depositors at Wells Fargo, which prompted a Congressional call in September to break the bank up, has not stopped under new CEO Tim Sloan.
A major commentary appeared in today’s Los Angeles Times, "Something Trump and Senator Warren agree on: Bringing back Glass-Steagall To break up big banks." It includes a history of how and why the Act was originally passed, its effects, the megabank effects of its abandonment, and the current agreements and differences between the White House and the Warren-McCain sponsors.
