PRESS RELEASE
Wall Street Mafia in Desperate Drive
To Stop Glass-Steagall
Aug. 9, 2013 (EIRNS)—This release was issued today by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee.
The criminal enterprise known as the Wall Street "too big to fail" banks is engaged in a desperate effort to block passage of Glass-Steagall. Bills have been introduced in both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate to reinstate the 1933 legislation that broke up the banks into totally separate commercial and investment entities. Through a lobbying effort estimated to have cost more than $300 million, Wall Street was able to repeal Glass Steagall in 1999.
So far, 25 state legislatures have introduced or passed resolutions demanding that their Congressional delegations support Glass-Steagall passage; and major labor, farm, and civil rights organizations have fully endorsed the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall separation.
In response to that nationwide outpouring of support for Glass-Steagall, Wall Street has responded with a four-pronged assault to block passage, according to well-placed Washington sources. These reports grid precisely with evidence directly obtained by LaRouche PAC organizers.
First, the Big Six Wall Street banks (JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo) have unleashed their lobbyists and trade associations to target state legislators backing the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall. Evidence of this operation has already surfaced in Delaware, Minnesota, South Dakota, and California.
Second, members of the U.S. House and Senate have been personally contacted by top officials of the Big Six banks, and threatened with loss of campaign support and with the loss of thousands of jobs in their districts unless they drop support for the Glass-Steagall bills.
Third, the CEOs and other top executives of the Too Big to Fail (TBTF) banks have been placing personal calls to Congressional leaders and other pro-Glass-Steagall influencial figures, further threatening reprisals against any people who persist in pressing for Glass-Steagall.
Fourth, LPAC activists mobilizing public support for Glass-Steagall have been targeted for physical attacks, vandalism, police harassment, and other active measures to blunt the growing support for breaking up the banks and throwing the top Wall Street criminals in jail. These attacks have been organized on a locale-by-locale basis, using whatever hooligan elements can be hired to carry out the attacks.
According to one informed Washington source, Wall Street and the Obama White House were caught completely off-guard by the rapid recent escalation of support for Glass-Steagall. The movement toward passage of the reinstatement bills moved ahead far more rapidly than anyone in the Administration or in the Big Six banks had expected. The fact that half of the state legislatures in the country, including New York and California, introduced resolutions calling for the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, indicated a level of mass public support that posed an existential threat to the very survival of the TBTF criminal enterprises of Wall Street.
It is no surprise that the TBTF banks have resorted to mafia tactics to push back against the momentum for Glass-Steagall. The banks are being protected from long-overdue criminal prosecution by the Obama White House and Justice Department, which has officially adopted the "Holder Doctrine" under which the big banks, particularly their top executives, have been given a literal license to steal and murder with immunity from prosecution. With Detroit showcasing the outright genocidal consequences of such policies as the rigging of LIBOR interest rates and the manipulation of interest rate swaps to loot the already desperate city budgets, the ability of the Obama Administration to continue their protection racket is running up against a growing popular rage.
The desperate Wall Street actions targeting Glass-Steagall are criminal in their own right.
