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International Campaign To Restore Glass-Steagall
Letter to Canada’s Mayors to demand a strict separation (firewall) between commercial banks and investment banks
16 août 2013
Montreal, August 19, 2013
Committee for the Republic of Canada The Mayor of ... Dear Mr. Mayor : We are contacting you as the mayor of the Municipality of ... to ask you to join our Canada-wide mobilization to get our federal government to vote a law which would re-introduce a strict separation (firewall) between commercial banks and investment banks, known in the 1980’s in Canada as the « four pillars » policy and in the United States as the Glass-Steagall law that came in existence in 1933 under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and was repealed, unfortunately, in 1999. National governments will only move on such a change in our banking laws if there is sufficient pressure from local elected officials and MNAs. It is obvious that what we are now facing is not just a cyclical economic crisis. What we are witnessing in southern Europe and in Detroit are the advanced warnings of the coming desintegration of the system. What is therefore required are bold decisions that have to be taken soon to rebuild the physical economy for the benefit of all Canadians and generations to come. The solutions exist but time is pressing if we are to avoid a systemic collapse first throughout the trans-Atlantic region and then, of the world economy. Learning from Cyprus and DetroitSince 2008 "too big to fail" banks were the recipients of numerous bailouts by governments. Now the bankers have pulled from their tool box a new looting instrument : the bail-ins as practiced against depositors in Cyprus or against pensions of city employees in the case of Detroit. In Pennsylvania alone there are now more than 20 cities that were put under State protection because they were looted by fraudulent contracts that involved interest rate swaps that were suppose to protect cities from steep variations in interets rates, not to mention similar frauds against most cities that got loans based on the rigged Libor rates. In the United States, resolutions demanding the reenactment of the Glass-Steagall law has been introduced by numerous city councils and twenty five States Legislatures. In France, fourteen mayors have addressed a letter to the Senators and Congressmen in Washington, D.C. calling upon them to reenact Glass-Steagall in the United States as a first step that national governments in Europe could imitate. In the U.S. House of Representatives, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur has introduced Proposition HR 129 « The Return to Prudent Banking » Act to restore the Glass-Steagall law. In the U.S. Senate, Senator Elizabeth Warren has just introduced a similar law « S.1282 — the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act ». We urge you to sign the Appeal and also demand that the federal government of Canada embark on a real nation building great project like the North American Water and Power Alliance (see the March 2012 Special Report NAWAPA XXI and the Video-NAWAPA XXI Animated Overview Sincerely Yours, Christiane Deland-Gervais ...2
The content of the following Appeal will specify what our overall objective is. Appeal for a Global Glass-Steagall Now !The following Appeal for a Global Glass-Steagall was issued June 17, 2012, for urgent action across the Trans-Atlantic region. 1. All nations of the Trans-Atlantic region must enact a law which would separate commercial banks from investment/speculative banking entities, based upon Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Glass-Steagall bill of June 16th, 1933. Up until the beginning of the 1980’s, the principles of Roosevelt’s reform were in place in European nations, in the form of strict regulation, and ensured that the banking sector mainly took on the character of commercial banks, and access to private accounts for risky speculative operations was impossible. As things stood before Glass-Steagall was dismantled in 1999 through the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, commercial banks must once again be completely separated from both investment banks and the insurance sector. 2. Commercial banks must be put under government protection, whilst the investment banks put their books in order without any help from taxpayers’ money, which in practice means that toxic paper must be written off in the trillions, even if this leads to the insolvency of the banks themselves. 3. A National Banking system in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton, within the framework of a new Credit System, must provide long-term credit with low interest rates for productive investments, which would in turn increase the productivity of the economy by promoting an increase in energy-flux density, and in scientific and technological progress. 4. The reconstruction of the real economy should be facilitated through long-term treaties of cooperation between sovereign nation-states, which would launch well-defined infrastructure and development projects in the context of the Mediterranean and North-American plan for an Economic Miracle, seen as a necessary extension of the Eurasian Land-Bridge. These contracts represent a de facto new credit system, a New Bretton Woods system, in the tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The purpose of re-enacting Glass-Steagall and implementing a Credit System is by no means only an improvement of technical details in banking, but rather, how the economy can ensure the survival of humanity over a period spanning many generations into the future, whilst increasing the productive powers from one generation to another. Human beings must once again be at the center, and the very purpose, of economics. We, the undersigned, direct our urgent appeal to governments and parliaments, that they fulfill their constitutional duty and protect the general welfare of the populations they represent, by immediately enacting Glass-Steagall banking separation into law. I support this Appeal First name _______________________________________________________________________________________ Last name ________________________________________________________________________________________ Profession ________________________________________________________________________________________ Organisation _________________________________________________________________________________________ City __________________________________________________________________________________________ Province __________________________________________________________________________________________ Phone number___________________________________________________________________________________ Email ___________________________________________________________________________________________ With my signature, I agree that my name may eventually be made public. You can sign the Appeal Online (here) |