EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FRIDAY APRIL 21, 2023

Stop World War III, Institute Global ‘Glass-Steagall’!

April 20, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—A draft law was introduced April 19 into the U.S. House of Representatives for re-regulating out-of-control financial entities, titled “The Return to Prudent Banking Act of 2023,” which is now a pivot point for a global shift toward a new economic architecture, to serve development, not speculation and collapse. In doing so, the bill at the same time is an initiative toward a new world security architecture, to provide for the common benefit of all nations and bring an end to the economic and military confrontations, now at the point of threatening nuclear war.

The bill, which awaits an HR number, will restore the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which insured sound commercial lending and separated it from speculative financial activity. It worked for 66 years until its repeal in 1999. Other nations likewise had implemented banking regulation on the Glass-Steagall model.

The principal sponsor of the “Prudent Banking” bill, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), described her legislation in a statement yesterday, as a measure which will “re-instate essential provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act, or the Banking Act of 1933, which had provided an unprecedented half-century of economic stability...[it will] restore the separation of commercial and investment banking.” She said that, “Wall Street has proven that it cannot control itself, and it is only a matter of time before it steers America into the next financial crisis. It cannot be any clearer that the time for systemic reform is now, which is why I am introducing the Return to Prudent Banking Act to do just that.”

The 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall in the U.S. marked the advent of all kinds of deregulated financial practices, speculation and debt-bubbles, leading inevitably to the 2007-2009 crisis. When Glass-Steagall was not restored at that time, the bailouts and liquidity pumping that followed, created an “everything bubble,” which is now bursting. The March bank failures from California to Switzerland, are just the beginning of the crisis.

Mobilize Support

The critical element now is for the widest U.S. and international support for reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, and for discussion of companion measures to boost physical production short and long term, to the levels of productivity and output—in food, water, power, health care, transport and other infrastructure—required as the platform for a thriving world.

Internationally, the Schiller Institute has promoted dialogue on these objectives, especially since the issuance on Nov. 22, 2022 of a discussion document, “Ten Principles of a New International Development and Security Architecture,” by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the Schiller Institute’s founder and chairwoman. Number 5, “The International Financial System Must Be Reorganized” cites the “Four Laws” for a sound economy issued (2014) by economist-statesman Lyndon LaRouche, whose first law is to re-enact the Glass-Steagall banking regulations.

The Schiller Institute has held a series of online international conferences over the last 18 months or so, the most recent on April 15-16, involving some 1,500 participants, from 35 nations. Its third panel on April 16, entitled “End the Casino Economy Before It’s Too Late,” identified the necessity of reinstating Glass-Steagall. The two-day conference, “Without the Development of All Nations, There Can Be No Lasting Peace for the Planet,” is available on the Schiller Institute website. The transcript of the Panel 3, “End the Casino Economy Before Its Too Late” will be published in the April 21, 2023 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.)

One special companion initiative mentioned in Panel 3 was that Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador will host an emergency heads of state conference on the food supply crisis over May 6-7 in Cancún, toward multi-nation collaboration for solving the problems of farming, food shortages, and hyperinflation.

Representative Kaptur’s April 19 announcement of bill notes in particular, that “The legislation has been endorsed by the Schiller Institute and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).” There is also widespread support in the U.S. farm belt: For example, in November 2022, the Kansas Cattlemen’s Association convention passed a resolution calling on Congress to re-institute Glass-Steagall.

End the War Economy

Now is the opportunity to act, not to complain! That goes for Americans fed up with the war economy, the lies, and blackout. And it goes for those around the world looking on with horror at how insane the U.S. leadership has been for years. The new move to reinstate Glass-Steagall is a sign of sanity and morality. Let’s go for it.

Mobilize for action to reinstate Glass-Steagall, and for all the infrastructure-building, and agro-industrial, health care, education, science development that goes along with it. In the U.S. we have 435 Congressional districts to put this on the agenda to make it happen in Washington.

Internationally, the new Glass-Steagall bill reinforces the “Call for an International Emergency Conference To Reorganize the Bankrupt Financial System,” that Helga Zepp-LaRouche released on March 14, within hours after the March 9-10 run that collapsed the Silicon Valley Bank in the U.S.

Be sure to attend—and spread the word—the April 22 Town Hall event in Manhattan (1-5 p.m. Eastern) sponsored by the Diane Sare for U.S. Senate campaign in New York, where Sare has made the reinstitution of Glass-Steagall a pillar of her political intervention. The event to take place live in person and streamed online, is titled, “Putting Away Childish Things: America in a World Without War.”

Sare’s 13 guest speakers and musicians—whose appearance does not indicate endorsement of a particular candidacy, but indicates commitment to end the war regime, and to bring the U.S. into participating in a “new paradigm of relations among sovereign states” for the common good and respect of all—include: Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Tara Reade, Scott Ritter, Janice Kortkamp, Larry Sharpe, Nick Brana, Dennis Speed, José Vega, Cade Levinson, and Classical musicians Claire Stadtmueller, William Hicks, Alex Guerrero, and Michelle Erin.

People make policies. If they are bad, people can change them. Sare advises in her Town Hall invitation, “As Lyndon LaRouche once said, in an echo of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ‘God would not create a world in which a solution could not be discovered for the problems facing us.’ I agree. I also think we are running out of time.”