PRESS RELEASE
Glass-Steagall To Be Debated in House Rules Committee
June 5, 2017 (EIRNS)—Reps. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.) will argue Tuesday evening in the House Rules Committee for their amendment to replace the Republican Party’s Financial CHOICE Act with the Kaptur-Jones bill to restore the 1933 Glass-Steagall banking separation act that was repealed in 1999. They will be witnesses testifying to the Committee.
The debate on this and other amendments will be streamed on the Rules Committee website, starting at approximately 5:00 p.m. EST tomorrow. The only bipartisan amendment is that of Kaptur and Jones.
Glass-Steagall has not been debated before on the House or Senate floor or in a House Committee. If Kaptur and Jones succeed in having their amendment ruled germane, it will set up a debate on Glass-Steagall vs. the CHOICE Act, which is similar, for Wall Street, to Britain’s destructive 1986 "Big Bang" total deregulation of the City of London. If the GOP-dominated Rules Committee rules against the amendment, Kaptur and Jones can still speak against this when the CHOICE Act comes on the House floor.
Representative Kaptur’s press release Monday said, "Kaptur and Jones have long been proponents of restoring Glass-Steagall protections to the banking system. The Return to Prudent Banking Act was reintroduced in February of this year, and has the bipartisan support of 50 co-sponsors. Support for the proposal was also in the Democratic and Republican Party platforms."
Bloomberg News hurried out a story assuring that "Glass-Steagall Revival Attempt in House Faces Long Odds." The Glass-Steagall sponsors plan to challenge those odds repeatedly and break through what is primarily Republican Congressional brainwashing by financial media "arguments against Glass-Steagall." Such as,
"Glass-Steagall repeal had nothing to do with the 2007-08 crash, because the big trigger failures were those of investment firms or commercial banks, not combined universal banks."
This argument is endlessly repeated, but the American people clearly know better, which is why support for restoring Glass-Steagall is broad among Democratic and Republican voters.
All the largest financial institutions rendered themselves and each other functionally bankrupt simultaneously by late 2008, an event unique in America’s history of bank panics, and disastrous for the economy and American people. This occurred within ten years of Glass-Steagall being eliminated, as a huge wave of deposits poured over the Glass-Steagall wall of big banks and into an orgy of speculation. No matter how many experts insist there was no connection between the two events, the connection is obvious to informed Americans.
Now what has grown is a huge corporate debt bubble, that once popped, will manifest an even worse crisis, as our big banks are bigger and more subsidized now than ever.
