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Italy:Venetian Regional Council Passes Glass-Steagall Motion
31 January 2014
(LPAC)—Today, with two abstentions, the Venetian Regional Council passed a resolution for Glass-Steagall banking separation. The motion had been introduced by a Lega Nord faction on Nov. 14. It was composed of the text voted up by the Lombardy Regional Council and includes a section dedicated to the regional economy. The group is the same that organized a public conference in Treviso Nov. 23 for Movisol expert Massimo Lodi Rizzini. The signers include the entire Lega Nord faction plus three councilmen from three other parties. The section dedicated to the regional economy says that the Veneto banking system represents 10.7% of the national system, and that 43.8% of it is composed of cooperative banks. "Credit represents an indispensable driver for growth and development of an economic system. The five most developed Italian regions (Lombardy, Latium, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna and Piedmont) provide access to 66.6% of total credit issued to firms in Italy. ... The total amount of bank loans to firms in Veneto as of June 30, 2013, is slightly above EU100 billion. Compared to one year before, loans to firms have dropped by 3.4%, less than the national average indeed, where the drop was 4.7%. Such an aspect confirms the hypothesis of a contraction in the volumes of credit issuance (credit crunch) to firms in our region too." Since 2008, "the Veneto economy has been thrown back of seven years"; unemployment has risen to 7.5% and family consumption has fallen by 2.3%. After a description of the historical Glass-Steagall Act and the Italian 1936 Banking Act, the Motion calls on the Italian government to draft a bill for "separating commercial banks and investment banks after the principles and the model of the Signed: Here the complete text: |