PRESS RELEASE
Nomi Prins Optimistic on Glass-Steagall
June 2, 2017 (EIRNS)—In a long interview with the International Business Times, banking expert and author Nomi Prins says she is optimistic on the fight to reinstate the 1933 Glass-Steagall banking separation law, based on her discussions on Capitol Hill. Whereas people like Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin have no intention to break up the banks, the rank and file in the Republican Party is much better, she says.
"Where I’m optimistic is that for whatever reason it got to the [Republican National Committee] RNC platform ... it’s there. And obviously it’s also on the Democratic platform and has been for a while. And why I’m optimistic is that I’m just personally having a lot more meetings on both sides of the aisle with a lean towards Republicans, particularly in some of the states that kind of swung over, wondering whether this is a real concern and because it’s on their platform, just taking it more seriously. I’m having meetings that used to be non-existent become hour-long meetings with some of the Congress people in those states. ... And they’re asking good questions.
"So that’s the only reason I can be optimistic. Obviously, the bill itself has been introduced to bring back Glass-Steagall again by Elizabeth Warren and Maria Cantwell, and it’s bipartisan in terms of John McCain and so forth in the Senate. There’s a bill H.R.790 which is a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall which has been introduced in a bipartisan manner by [Democratic] Congresswoman [Marcy] Kaptur of Ohio and Congressman Walter Jones, Republican from North Carolina, that has 50 co-sponsors right now, and that’s more than a similar bill had the last session around.
"There are more people in the Republican Party who are asking good questions and spending more time thinking about the matter of separating the banks, and questioning the leadership, I think in the Republican Party as to what Trump meant, and what the platform meant when the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall was put in, versus what people like Steve Mnuchin say when they say that big banks should not be broken up, that that would be a bad thing. That’s not clear, within the party itself. That lack of clarity, I think, is an opportunity."
Earlier in the interview, Prins says that the corporate debt bubble today is what the subprime bubble was in 2007-08, and it is bursting.
