Mar del Plata, Argentina, May 13, 2013
To the Honorable Representatives and Senators of the Congress of the United States of America Washington, D.C.
I have the pleasure of addressing the Honorable Legislators, representatives of the people and of the states which make up the American nation, for the purpose of expressing my support for the proposal and approval of H.R. 129, sponsored by Representatives Marcy Kaptur and Walter Jones, known as the "Return to Prudent Banking Act."
As is well known, this initiative proposes to reinstate the Glass-Steagall law, passed by the Honorable U.S. Congress during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for the purpose of separating the activities of commercial banks — promoters and sustainers of productive investment — from those developed by banks dedicated to speculative investment.
For five years now, the so-called "developed world" of the Northern Hemisphere — the United States and Europe — has experienced in varying intensities an apparently unending financial crisis which, projected onto the populations of those countries, has severely affected their quality of life. The closure of factories and businesses, job loss, housing precariousness, wage cuts and drastic cuts in funding for healthcare, education and pensions are, among other things, some of the most visible effects of this crisis which is now on the verge of becoming, in the short term, a planetary catastrophe.
Unfortunately, to date, far from seeking a reactivation of the physical economy, the affected governments have followed to the letter the advice of the global financial techno-bureaucracy, (IMF, World Bank, European Central Bank) slashing state budgets again and again, yet never failing to provide inexhaustable funds to the speculative banking system, which is the real culprit in this unending crisis that is now on such an explosive path.
For all these reasons, passage of H.R. 129 is more necessary than ever, as it is the ideal instrument to combat financial speculation and bring about the recovery of the national physical economy through the creation of a new bank based on the principles defended by the great American patriot Alexander Hamilton.
Honorable Legislators, with expressions of my highest esteem and regard,
Leopoldo Frenkel
Lawyer and Doctor of Jurisprudence,
former professor of Political Science and Constitutional Law at
the University del Salvador and the University of Buenos Aires,
Argentina
