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Martin O’Malley Repeats Call to Re-Instate Glass Steagall

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Martin O’Malley, former Maryland governor and Baltimore mayor, today on morning television issued a call for reinstating the Glass Steagall rule. He appeared on nationwide MSNBC TV, where, besides fielding questions about his intentions for the presidential candidacy in the Democratic Party, his first remarks addressed the economic crisis. He stressed to “Morning Joe” hosts, that,

“Our problems are not going to solve themselves. Many of the things that we did to dis-connect the hard work of American workers from the productivity of corporations are things that we did. So these are things we brought upon ourselves. We’d like to pretend that the economy blew in here on some sort of Gulf stream or jet stream. But the fact is, we make these rules. And we can make better rules in order to restore that link between hard work and the opportunity to get ahead.”

The hosts then asked, what would be the one rule that should be passed to reverse the income inequality–the rich get richer, the poor get poorer? “What’s one thing that reverses that trend?”

O’Malley:

“Well one thing that would-, one thing would be to re-instate Glass Steagall. For 70 years, we prevented banks from gambling with our money, and wrecking our economy and running roughshod over the common good that we share as a people; and having a stable and good economy. Everybody–I mean on both sides of the aisle–I mean, so many people say we should do that, and yet it remains undone. And some people in my own party are holding themselves out as promoting some sort of a Dodd-Frank Lite–‘We don’t want to offend anyone on Wall Street, so let us not talk honestly about how we can rein in this excessive behavior.’

“Because one of the things we haven’t talked about too much, is that for all of the pain from the home foreclosures and the job losses, the concentration of wealth after each of these last two busts on the stock market actually increased!

“In other words, while other people lost homes, the people at the top came out even further ahead.”

Next week, O’Malley is travelling to Iowa, known for being a caucus state, but also home to farm state support for re-instating Glass Steagall as national priority. Newly retired Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin (D) introduced a bill in 2013 to re-instate Glass Steagall (S. 985).

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