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Citizens Electoral Council of Australia
Media Release Thursday, 12 January 2017
Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au
Support campaign to make Trump keep Glass-Steagall promise
Glass-Steagall advocates worldwide are being urged to support an intensive effort to make the full separation of commercial banks from Wall Street’s casino investment banks the first item on Donald Trump’s agenda once he is inaugurated as US President on 20 January. A group of Ohio Democrats who are supporters of Bernie Sanders, calling themselves “Our Revolution in Northwest Ohio”, are demanding Trump raise the issue in his State of the Union address and then “make good on his campaign promise” by delivering the new law.
The Ohio Revolution group has issued a call to Trump, for Glass-Steagall supporters to endorse, which will be presented to the incoming president before his inauguration. International supporters of Glass-Steagall are urged to also add their names to the call, to send a clear message that the world urgently needs Glass-Steagall, and that delivering on his campaign promise would provide global leadership on this most crucial issue. If Trump fulfils his election promise, the politicians in Australia, the UK etc. who have blocked moves to implement Glass-Steagall will be forced to address the issue again.
The international message to Trump is very important—sign for yourself, and get everyone you know to also endorse the call. The call closes on 18 January (19 January in Australia), in order for it to be delivered to Trump before his inauguration, so sign now!
Following is the full text of the Ohio call (more details are available at bernie2016.blogspot.com.au).
Open letter to President Donald Trump:
Make good on your campaign statement to support the Glass-Steagall Act!
From: Our Revolution in Northwest Ohio
Endorsed by: Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus (www.cuycpc.org); and by Ohio Revolution (www.ohiorevolution.us).
We the undersigned strongly feel the need for protecting our economy from another unnecessary market crash and recession like the one experienced in December of 2007. As you take office, the conditions for a collapse are too similar to those of 2007: rising asset values together with a lack of separation between FDIC insured banking and risk-investment brokering.
We applaud your campaign statement in Charlotte, North Carolina, October 26, 2016, endorsing a call for “A 21st Century version of Glass-Steagall,” and reintroducing a modern day Glass-Steagall Act. We trust that you understand that stabilising the business climate and securing the assets as separate from Wall Street speculation is a key to prosperity during your administration.
To set the tone of discourse in Congress 2017, we ask that you restate your support for a Glass-Steagall Act during your State of the Union address.
Be assured in doing so, you will find common ground with both the Republicans and the Democrats since both party platforms have the support of banking legislation that separates insured accounts from Wall Street speculation in their respective platforms. Thank you for responding to the call from citizens, businesspersons, bankers and legislators as we move forward.
Sincerely Yours, etc.
Click here to add your name and message to this call. Signers from Australia, New Zealand, the UK and all other nations should identify their country in the “Message to President Trump” field.
More information
The Ohio Revolution group says that “This simple action has several powerful effects: it initiates a positive action; brings varying groups together to build a coalition with a common purpose; will be synchronised with Congressional legislation and inform lobbying on Capitol Hill; be the basis for press conferences and public actions. Letters will be personally hand-carried to members of Congress and official representatives of President Trump.”
In an article supporting the initiative, Pam Martens and Russ Martens wrote in Wall Street On Parade on 6 January: “Northwest Ohio supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders in his run for President have launched a nationwide push to enlist other organisations to send it letters and take to social media to endorse a demand that President-elect Donald Trump fulfil a campaign pledge. Trump made the pledge on 26 October of this year in a speech he delivered in Charlotte, North Carolina, promising to enact a 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act to reform Wall Street. Such legislation has been sitting dormant in both the House and Senate for years. If enacted, it would separate the deposit-taking, taxpayer-insured commercial banks from the globe-trotting, high-risk trading casinos known as investment banks on Wall Street.
“The 1933 Glass-Steagall Act kept the financial system of the United States safe for 66 years until its repeal in 1999 during the Bill Clinton presidency. It took only nine years after its repeal for Wall Street to blow up the financial system in a replay of 1929. All that prevented another Great Depression was a massive, secret money drop by the Federal Reserve. …
“Sanders’ supporters have good reason to be holding Trump’s feet to the fire on his pledge to restore Glass-Steagall. Instead of making good on his pledge to drain the Washington swamp, Trump has stacked his administration with men tied to Goldman Sachs. …
“The 848-page Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, enacted over six years ago in 2010, has indeed been a failure as Trump correctly notes. Dodd-Frank mandated 398 new rules, none of which have been successful in curtailing fraud by Wall Street banks. What has happened instead is that the biggest banks on Wall Street are signing deferred prosecution agreements with the Justice Department for prior felonies as they invent ingenious new ways to loot the investing public. Instead of these so-called ‘universal’ banks functioning as one-stop financial supermarkets as they promised Congress prior to the repeal of Glass-Steagall, they have become sprawling criminal enterprises, frequently operating as cartels to rig various markets or engaging in ever more brazen frauds, as we saw in the recent two million fake accounts at Wells Fargo or the London Whale scandal at JPMorgan Chase where it gambled with hundreds of billions of dollars of its depositors’ money, not its own capital, and lost over $6.2 billion in high-risk derivatives trading in London.”
The LaRouche Political Action Committee, US associates of the Citizens Electoral Council of Australia, supports and is circulating the call. LPAC representatives, organising for Glass-Steagall in the halls of Congress when it reconvened on 3 January, were informed that the existing Glass-Steagall bills would be reintroduced into the new Congress within a number of days.
Cross-party collaboration on Glass-Steagall is expected. A number of Democrats have indicated willingness to work with Trump against the hard-core Republican neoconservatives. Several Democrats from the House, all of whom support Glass-Steagall, held a press conference on 3 January saying they will work with Trump on such policies as rewriting the North American Free Trade Agreement. Participating in the press conference, the American Banking Association reported that the question most asked of its spokespeople in 2016 concerned “a proposed Glass-Steagall revival”.
Remember: add your name and message to this call, and identify your country in the “Message to President Trump” field.
Click here for a free copy of the CEC’s pamphlet Glass-Steagall Now!, which explains the dangers lurking in Australia’s banking system that only a full Glass-Steagall separation can fix.
Click here to join the CEC as a member.
Click here to refer others to receive regular email updates from the Citizens Electoral Council of Australia.
