Sen. Cantwell: Outcry by American People Needed to Pass Glass-Steagall | LaRouchePAC

Sen. Cantwell: Outcry by American People Needed to Pass Glass-Steagall LaRouchePAC


May 15, 2010 (LPAC)—PBS's "To The Contrary" program, hosted by Bonnie Erbe, began airing an interview with Glass Steagall co-sponsor Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), a show taped on May 12 clearly designed to build support for passing Glass-Steagall. The syndicated show will air nationally this weekend at different times, on 260 PBS stations.
The American people understand intuitively why we have to return to Glass Steagall, Sen. Cantwell argued, and the law has bipartisan support, but to ensure passage, "it may take the American people having an outcry, over the fact, that after all that's happened, some people here in Congress still don't get it. That that's the kind of safety and safeguards that we deserve."

After Erbe's interview of Cantwell (see below), a heated debate followed among Erbe and her four panelists. D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton defended Glass-Steagall, strongly, blaming the "worst recession of all time" on its repeal, with backing by Erbe, against the angry rejection by Genevieve Wood of the British Fabian Society's Heritage Foundation, of any return to Glass-Steagall.

A transcript of the interview follows:

Host ERBE: "The Democratic Senator proposes re-instating the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era law, repealed a decade ago. That law set up a strict division between regular commercial banking and investment banking, so banks could not buy risky investments with depositors' money. This week I interviewed Senator Cantwell on what she thinks needs to be done to prevent future market meltdown."

CANTWELL: "Well, its pretty scary. The American people obviously don't want to have a roller coaster on Wall Street. We already know what happened in 2008, and that was scary enough for us. So, we want to get back to stable banking, and we want to get back to an investment market that has the right amount of oversight and transparency so that we know that regulators can find anybody who is manipulating the market, or doing something untowards, to create some sort of device that is putting them at an advantage. And so, that kind of functionality, we did away with in 2000. And we need to put the rules back into Wall Street."
ERBE: "What are those rules? Are you talking about Glass-Steagall, or something else?"

CANTWELL: "Well, I certainly am a big supporter of Glass-Steagall, which would be to go back to what we had prior to 2000, which is the separation of commercial banking from investment banking.

"If you think about it, they are two different functions. Investment banking is about taking risks. But with commercial banking, you want your deposits to be secure. But when you let your deposits—yours and mine—be used by those investment houses, which are huge, risk-taking ventures, it really does put those savings and those deposits at risk.

"And we should go back to separating them. I think the American people know this. They get it intuitively. They know that there was a reason in the last Depression that we got to this point.

"So, what's taking you so long! Go back to separating it. So we'll have a vote on that.

"But we also need to regulate these derivatives, these new financial tools that came into the marketplace in the late '90s, and make sure that they have the oversight of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.
"Right now, hamburger in America—beef futures—has more oversight than some of these derivatives!"
ERBE: "How much support do you have for re-instating Glass-Steagall?"

CANTWELL: "Well, we'll find out. I would hope that we'd have a lot of bi-partisan support on both sides of the aisle, but this isn't really about being Democrat or Republican. If you— you know, if you think about it, this is about whether you're going to have the right system in place to protect Americans going forward. And while this was a big blow-up about derivatives, you know, these investment houses will continue to be creative. They"ll continue to be creative about how they take risk. But, you know, we want to keep the rest of the commercial banking community separate from that."
ERBE: "I mean, seriously, do think this will go through? A re-instatement of Glass-Steagall? Because we know that it became law, right after the Great Depression, and then the banking industry spent 70 years lobbying against it, and got it thrown out, or not renewed in Congress. And now that its back, you must be facing a mountain of opposition from financial institutions."
CANTWELL: "My personal impression, my personal views, are: it will be re-instated. But, I'll bet you, we'll end up with a two-step process. It may take the American people having an outcry, over the fact that after all that's happened, some people here in Congress still don't get it. That that's the kind of safety and safeguards that we deserve."

Check out my website. http://www.icelandcrash.com

THE MONEY MASTERS ARE ENSLAVING ICELAND.

Save the People of Iceland - the Official Petition


We the undersigned support the people of Iceland in their uprising against being bullied into taking on more debt then they can possible handle from the private bank Icesave. Private debt should never be passed on to taxpayers.  http://savethepeopleoficeland.com/  

Iceland may be the first Western democracy to be forced into South-American style debt-slavery. The IMF, in concert with the UK and the Netherlands, has attempted to strongarm the recently impoverished Island of 317,000 into paying over 3.6 billion pounds ($6.3bn) -- $86,000 per Icelandic family -- at 5.5% interest for the next generation. The money is not conventional government debt, but arises from the collapse of a private multi-national bank during the financial crisis.

The issue is so serious that the entire nation will vote on the issue towards the end of February 2010.

On December 30, 2009, after extraordinary diplomatic threats, Iceland's parliament passed narrowly a bill agreeing to pay the onerous terms. Only a few months earlier parliament had agreed to the full amount, but under more reasonable conditions.
The people of Iceland must be internationally supported, so they can feel safe in voting down debt-slavery. If Iceland falls, it won't be long before other countries suffer similar financial extortion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icesave_dispute

THE MONEY MASTERS ARE ENSLAVING US, and USA.

AVAILABLE AT GOOGLE VIDEO

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936&hl=en

THE MONEY MASTERS part 1.

BRAVE ICELAND!

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

January 7, 2010

It goes virtually without saying, that I am proud of Iceland and its President.

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Iceland President Stands by His People

January 8, 2010 (LPAC)-- Despite the hostility of the governments of Great Britain and the Netherlands, which have threatened to kick Iceland out of the "international community," Iceland President Olaf Ragnar Grimsson is standing by his decision, and defending, in interviews and statements, the right of his people to national sovereignty. In the Financial Times today, he is quoted as saying, "The Icelandic constitution is based on the fundamental principle that the people have sovereignty. It is the responsibility of the President to make sure that the will of the people will prevail."

He then called on the peoples of Britain and Netherlands ("and their political leaders") to stand "with the longstanding democratic traditions of Britain and the Netherlands, acknowledging that a referendum is a democratic way of making a decision," Grimsson was also interviewed in Swedish radio.

In an interview with BBC on Wednesday evening, Grimsson was verbally assaulted by the host, who looked like an attorney for Shylock and treated the President of a state like a felon. "Don't trust an Icelander," "Aren't international agreements more important than a President's will?" and "Are you happy with these results?" (downrating, loss of international credit, etc.) were the interviewer's questions and remarks. Grimsson taught the arrogant fellow a lesson, telling him, "I understand that Britain is not familiar with systems where the people is called to express its will " and that in Iceland, "not the parliament, but the nation is sovereign."

In contrast to the oligarchy, the British people continue to express their sympathy for Icelanders, at least judging from readers' comments continuing to flow in to major dailies (see below). It is probably due to this that a faction of the British establishment, represented by the Financial Times, has taken a distance from the government and openly rejected the "hard-line" approach towards Iceland. Significantly, an FT editorial today is entitled "Do Not Put Iceland in a Debtors' Prison." The FT also chose to publish a letter by Advocacy International, saying that it is "unjust" to make Iceland take sole responsibility for the "reckless behavior of private bankers and risk-takers."

The FT ran as a blowup quote, the view of its chief financial commentator, Martin Wolf: "This is not about cutting a running deficit, which is, indeed, unavoidable. It is about forcing innocent people to assume gigantic liabilities for which they have no legal or moral responsibility. How would U.K. citizens feel if they were forced to assume a debt of ￡400 billion because of HSBC's failure to meet deposit insurance liabilities in Asia? Let the U.K. take the bank's assets and leave it at that."

Also, Michael Hudson from the University of Missouri writes that "Iceland has the right to refuse debt servitude." Hudson argues that Iceland could pay foreign debt only out of balance-of-payments receipts, i.e. through export revenues. But already fish export revenues have been entirely earmarked to service existing debt; the same goes for aluminum exports and its geothermal and hydroelectric resources. Add to this the fact that most families have mortgages which, if the currency is depreciated, can only get worse, and you have the picture: It is impossible for Iceland to pay the debt. "A pragmatic economic principle is at work in such conditions. Debts that cannot be paid, will not." If we have learned the lessons of the collapse of living standards in post-Soviet Russia, he ends by asking, "by how many years must Icelandic lifespans shorten?"

According to a European banking source, the British and the Dutch are going to dump the burden on Scandinavian countries. On their side, the resistance organization in Iceland is calling on the Scandinavian governments to support them against the London and The Hague.

THE REAL CHANGE IS COMING

The Coming Three Weeks Are Predetermined By Dynamics:
Implement the Measures I Propose, or We Loose Humanity.

Let's get the picture: First of all, what some of you still don't understand, even bright people, you still think in terms of kinematics, not dynamics, and this is typical. There are very few people— only by being pushed, do they ever get to dynamics. You're just not used to it. A former President doesn't really understand it, either, and they make mistakes.
All right, now what are we into? We saw a process last August, in which a lot of the American people went out to tell their Congress, "You — shut up! Now, listen: Here's what we want you to do for us, now you listen!" Okay, that process didn't end. It wasn't an "event": There was a process, where the American people were stirred up to the point, they were telling their representatives in the Congress, "You! Shut up. Listen —you're acting terribly. You're going to change now, aren't you? Here's what we want you to do, we want you to listen, and change your behavior."
Well, they didn't, did they? They still are playing the games, like the crazy thing — I mean, this idea of trying to push this health care through is a real piece of idiocy! Particularly at this stage.
Well, the process has gone on, since last August. It's undergone various transformations. Now, we're reaching the point that we're headed toward a breakdown. There's a breakdown crisis in process in Europe, there's a breakdown crisis in the Americas, there's a breakdown crisis inside the United States. We can not, at this point, assume, that unless we do what I will emphasize we must do, by the middle of January — no later — unless we do that, the United States will go down, and the world will go down, into a prolonged Dark Age. So people who have these ideas about step-by-step, the usual kinematic kind of thing, we'll do this, and then we'll do this, and then we'll do this — no! You won't do that.
What's going to have to happen, the first thing that's going to have to happen to do any damned good at all—any other measure's a waste of time—is to immediately install a transformation from a monetary system to a credit system. And this is done by the vehicle of a Glass-Steagall reform of the entire banking system. Which means that those parts of the banking system which do not conform to a Glass-Steagall standard are simply put aside; they don't count. And that would probably take a good deal of about $22-23 trillion worth of bailout money away—it would just fly away, a good deal of it. And then, we would turn around, on the same day virtually, and we would utter credit-system credit for large-scale programs. We would immediately install the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act of 2007, which should have been done then: because the housing crisis is very serious, right now, and there's no answer to it, except this.
First of all, you agree that you're going to change the U.S. system, from a monetary system, which it is now, to a credit system. And the credit system will conform to a Glass-Steagall standard for commercial banks. And we're concerned only about commercial banks, and also savings banks, of course; but, commercial banks. The Wall Street-type banks, they're on their own. If they can't meet up to the standard? That's it! We're going to write off trillions of dollars of phony-money debt, in order to save the world.
And this has to be done in the first weeks in January. This is the highest priority: This is emergency legislation, because if we don't do that, somewhere, maybe a little bit after the middle of January, or even possibly before, the whole system's coming down if we don't do it, beforehand. MORE: http://www.larouchepac.com/node/12879

THE REAL CHANGE IS COMING