It’s Now or Never: Glass-Steagall or Die

In testimony before the U.S. Congress several years ago, Thomas Hoenig, the Vice Chairman of the Federal Depositors Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and former President of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, warned that a new financial crash, worse than 2008, was inevitable unless the entire financial system was overhauled—starting with the reinstating of Glass Steagall. He pointedly told the assembled Members of Congress that if they waited to act until after the crash, it would be too late—as they would collectively cave in to pressure from the Treasury Department and the Fed to enact yet another suicidal bailout.

The moment of truth has now arrived, and the American people, following the example of the recent crushing defeat of President Obama, with the veto override of the JASTA bill (Justice Against Supporters of Terrorism Act), must act now to force Congress to reconvene immediately to pass the Glass Steagall legislation, which is already before the House and the Senate. Passing Glass Steagall is the necessary first step in a total overhaul of the U.S. economy, as spelled out by Lyndon LaRouche in his Four Laws, which includes the launching of a massive capital investment of Federal credit into major infrastructure projects, that create millions of productive, good-paying jobs, and a crash effort to revive the near-dead U.S. space program and related frontier scientific areas.

The CEO of Deutsche Bank has been in Washington making a beg-pitch to the Department of Justice, to reduce the penalty for the bank’s widespread mortgage securities fraud, hoping that by paying $5 billion instead of $14 billion, they can postpone the bank’s collapse. The International Monetary Fund, in its annual
autumn economic forecast, acknowledged that Deutsche Bank is at the epicenter of a looming global financial crash, but proposed a series of psychotic austerity measures, more aimed at blocking China’s Eurasian infrastructure investments, than at addressing the reality of the imminent evaporation of the entire trans-Atlantic financial system.

That imminent blowout is also the key factor, driving the lunatics in the Obama White House and Office of the Secretary of Defense to push for an open confrontation with Russia. A meeting on Wednesday of the Principals Committee was taking up a series of escalating military options in Syria that would all amount to a direct provocation of World War III. And Defense Secretary Ashton “Strangelove” Carter has been running around, threatening first use of thermonuclear weapons against Russia, as he pushes for a $1 trillion modernization and expansion of the U.S. thermonuclear triad.

Every House Member and one-third of the Senate is up for re-election in a matter of weeks. They are all back home in their districts campaigning. They must be told, in no uncertain terms, that they must return to Washington—before Deutsche Bank, or the Italian, British or French banks, or Wall Street trigger the biggest financial blowout in modern history. Those institutions that have endorsed the reinstating of Glass Steagall must be mobilized to act decisively now. Both the Democratic and Republican party platforms call for the reinstating of Glass Steagall. The AFL-CIO is pushing for Glass Steagall. It’s time to pony up.

This fight can and must be won—and that means winning before the whole system blows up. This has now reached the point that we are all in a life or death situation, and that, unfortunately, is not an exaggeration.

I want to help make this happen.