Thursday, June 6, 2013

Latest from LaRouche

Glass-Steagall Resolution Introduced in New York State Assembly!

Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Glass-Steagall Banking Act in 1933..
 
Alexander Hamilton.
 
Ferdinand Pecora.
May 29th, 2013 • 5:24 PM
This afternoon, the resolution, K490, sponsored by Assemblyman Phil Steck (D-Schenectedy), was introduced. K490 currently has 19 co-sponsors, including 3 Republicans. It has been referred to the Committee on Banks.
The resolution urges the U.S. Congress to support the efforts to "reinstate the separation of commercial and investment banking functions in effect under the Glass-Steagall Act, and to support H.R.129 - the Return to Prudent Banking Act of 2013."
The Resolution states:
WHEREAS, An effective money and banking system is essential to the functioning of the economy; and
WHEREAS, Such a system must function in the public interest, without bias; and
WHEREAS, The Federal Banking Act of 1933, commonly referred to as the Glass-Steagall Act, was written, as stated in its introduction: to provide for the safer and more effective use of the assets of banks, to regulate interbank control, to prevent the undue diversion of funds into speculative operations, and for other purposes; and
WHEREAS, Since 1933, and for 66 years, the Glass-Steagall Act protected the public interest in matters dealing with the regulation of commercial and investment banking, in addition to insurance companies and securities; and
WHEREAS, The Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999, permitting members of the financial industry to exploit the financial system for their own gain in disregard of the public interest, contributing to the greatest speculative bubble and worldwide recession since the Great Depression of 1933; and
WHEREAS, The worldwide recession has left millions of homes in foreclosure; has cost the loss of millions of jobs nationwide; and has put severe financial strains on states, counties and cities, exacerbating unemployment and loss of social services; and
WHEREAS, Many of the financial industry entities were "bailed out" by the United States Treasury at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars to American taxpayers; and
WHEREAS, Within the high-hundreds of pages of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, there are no prohibitions that prevent "too big to fail" commercial banks and bank holding companies from investing in, or undertaking, substantial risks involving speculative securities and trillions of dollars of derivatives exposure;
and
WHEREAS, The American taxpayers continue to be at risk for the next round of bank failures; and
WHEREAS, The United States Senate and House of Representatives have been making efforts to restore the protections of the Glass-Steagall Act; and
WHEREAS, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), and Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC) have introduced H.R. 129, known as the Return to Prudent Banking Act of 2013, which calls for reviving the separation between commercial banking and the securities business in the manner provided in the Glass-Steagall Act; and
WHEREAS, In the previous 112th Congress, the Return to Prudent Banking Act of 2011 (HR 1489) had listed as co-sponsors from New York: New York Congressmen and Congresswomen Louise McIntosh Slaughter (D-NY), Edolphus Towns (D-NY), Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY), Paul Tonko (D-NY), and Maurice Hinchey (D-NY); and was endorsed by The Port Jervis City Council, The Rochester & Genesee Valley Area Labor Federation AFL-CIO, The Common Council of the City of Buffalo, NY, and The United Federation of Teachers, representing the 5 boroughs of New York City; and
WHEREAS, The reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, and H.R.129 also has widespread national support from prominent economic, banking, labor, academic, legislative and business leaders, many of the major and respected national newspapers and many others; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That the Congress of the United States be and hereby is respectfully memorialized by this Legislative Body to support H.R.129, and enact legislation that would reinstate the separation of commercial and investment banking functions that were in effect under the Glass-Steagall Act, prohibiting commercial banks and bank holding companies from investing in stocks, underwriting securities or investing in or acting as guarantors to derivative transactions, in order to prevent American taxpayers from being called upon to fund hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out financial institutions, as well as secure a safe American banking system, which can protect deposits, and supply needed credit for a productive economy; and be it further
RESOLVED, That copies of this Resolution, suitably engrossed, be transmitted to the President of the Senate of the United States, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to each member of the Congress of the United States from the State of New York, and Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur.
 
 
 

Liam Halligan Says In America "The Glass-Steagall Debate Is Live"

June 3rd, 2013 • 8:25 AM
In a June 1 article in the Daily Telegraph headlined, "Lack of genuine reform is sowing seeds of next crisis," [1] Halligan — who has repeatedly pushed Glass-Steagall — reported on the fact that "draft legislation to restore Glass-Steagall has just been introduced in the U.S. Senate. This is a companion bill to a measure in the House of Representatives that now has 63 sponsors. Over in America, the Glass-Steagall debate is live." Halligan not only reports on this key development, which most major media have studiously blacked out, but he again comes out swinging for the needed policy shift, noting that "in the U.S., the debate on Glass-Steagall is now shifting," and that voices in the UK also need to speak out, "and soon.."
"For many years, this column has banged the drum for the U.S. in particular, but also the UK and Western Europe, to re-impose a decisive split between commercial banks (that take deposits and lend to ordinary firms and households) and investment banks (which take big risks)...
"Those of us who called for a new Glass-Steagall back in the immediate aftermath of the sub-prime crisis were often derided. Yet numerous very serious people have emerged as strong supporters of this view. Outgoing Bank of England Governor, Sir Mervyn King, backs re-imposing a genuine divide. So does former Federal Reserve boss Paul Volcker and former UK chancellor Lord Lawson. Even John Reed and Sandy Weill, the two Wall Street plutocrats who made vast fortunes off the back of the Clinton-era repeal, now admit that dismantling Glass-Steagall was wrong...
"Sick of market instability, America's mighty farming lobby last week called for a new Glass-Steagall [2]. 'Congress must learn from the past in order to prevent future financial crises,' said Roger Johnson, president of the U.S. National Farmers Union. We've also lately had a courageous set of statements from an economist called Jeff Sachs...
"So, in the U.S., the debate on Glass-Steagall is now shifting. Here in the UK, our 'Vickers reforms' ... are a deeply inadequate response to our current predicament. While some UK authority figures have spoken out, I know for a fact that there are many, many more. They need to find their voice — and soon."
(Links added--ed.)
 
 
 

From Date-Rape to Forced Bail-In: The Case of Spain's Bankia

June 4th, 2013 • 8:00 PM
On May 28, some 200,000 individuals who had once been small savers in Spain's bankrupt Bankia bank, were violently despoiled of what little remained of their original savings. New shares in the nationalized bank went on sale that day, and the price plunged almost instantly from the 1.35 euro level holders had been promised, down to 0.55 euros—a more than 80% drop from their floating price in 2011, when the banking group was formed. The total losses these 200,000 families face—like a million or more households with "preferential" shares in other bankrupt Spanish banks—now come to 75-90% of their original deposits.
As such, the Bankia story is a prelude to, and marker for, the broader codification of exactly this thievery that is now underway as the "bail-in" scam promulgated in the illegal Dodd-Frank bill in the United States, and similar legislation under preparation in Europe.
Forbes magazine headlined their May 28 report on the Bankia story: "Spain's Bankia Decimates Savers As Stock Plummets; Police Officer Stabs Banker Who Sold Him shares [1]." The point should not be lost on those now designing the bail-in policy.
Here's how the fleecing of Bankia depositors evolved, as originally reported by LaRouchePAC on March 28, 2013 ("[url:'node/26017"]Spanish Bank Deposits Seized, Cyprus-Style"):
Over recent years, about one million depositors in Spain's major banks (400,000 of them were in Bankia) were "date-raped" by their own bankers, who fraudulently tricked them into purchasing the bank's "preferred shares"— or "preferentes," as they are known in Spain, with promises of very high rates of return. Marketed as fixed-term deposits, the reality of the "preferentes" is that they were bonds that either could never be cashed in, or carried terms as long as 1,000 year!
When Bankia went bankrupt in May 2012, the FROB, Spain's bank reorganization agency, on explicit instructions from a Memorandum of Undertanding with the detested Troika, imposed a "haircut" (write-down) of 38% on the Bankia "preferentes," followed by their forced conversion (the date was over) into common stock in Bankia. The victims were promised a per-share value of 1.35 euros, once the market was allowed to resume trading in Bankia stock.
About a year later, on May 21, 2013, trading in Bankia stock was finally permitted—but only for large institutional investors, who were allowed to take their money and run. Small savers, who held about 5 billion of the total 6.85 billion euros in holdings, had to wait another week. Then on May 28, when trading for them was permitted, the share price plummeted from 1.35 to 0.57 euros.
Spain's ADICAE (Association of Consumers and Users of Banks, Savings Banks and Insurance Companies), which has filed numerous lawsuits against Bankia and other banks on behalf of the "preferente" victims, has estimated that the combined "double thievery and fraud" amounts to a 75% loss in the Bankia case—so far. If and when the Bankia share price plummets further, which it assuredly will, the losses will become even greater for those still holding stock.
ADICAE has denounced the whole scheme as a "premeditated strategy to hide part of the losses," and a "pyramid swindle of the Spanish banking system."
The Forbes account explained: "All along, the exchange was a trap for retail investors... The average Spaniard is suffering, and the situation has gotten to the point where on Sunday, a police officer stabbed a former Bankia employee four times after a heated discussion related to the sale of preferred shares in the failed banking group."
 
 
 

Budget Cutting Strips Abandoned Detroit of Police and Fire Services

June 4th, 2013 • 8:26 PM
Unarmed "volunteers" are being mobilized to patrol Detroit's increasingly-Wild West streets, because its police force has been sacrificed, like the city itself, on the altar of money-first deindustrialization, austerity, and budget cuts.
Detroit's police force today only musters around 2,500 officers, as compared to 3,350 in 2009, and it is losing 25 officers more every month to retirement, according to a May 30 Bloomberg wire[1]. When the United States still had an auto industry, Detroit was a prosperous city of 1.8 million; today 701,000 inhabitants are left. With 40% of city lots and 78,000 structures vacant or unused, Detroit was sixth in the nation for property crimes in 2012 among U.S. cities of over 300,000 in size, and homicides rose from 344 to 411 in 2012.
Under these conditions, police salaries have been cut by 10%, and police put on 12-hour shifts, without overtime pay.
The policy remains to do whatever it takes to balance the budget. State-appointed emergency manager Kevyn Orr announced in May that there was enough money in the budget to hire a "restructuring specialist" to overhaul the police and fire departments, but not to hire new police officers. Instead, he plans to add three more squads a year to the current 25 squads of volunteer retirees who have been handed radios and matching T-shirts and sent out on "patrol." The volunteer program can't reestablish security for citizens, but so what? It costs less than the annual salaries and benefits for three police officers.
How about the Fire Department, which fields an average of about 100 runs a day, about 50 of those for actual fires, of which about 20 to 30 are house fires? Are "volunteer bucket brigades" to come soon? That would be far less expensive than replacing the department's equipment which is so aged and dsyfunctional that DFD Captain Bruce Holben called it "junk" in an April interview with the Detroit Free Press [2]. Volunteers could provide their own supplies, just as the firefighters had been doing, until Charmin donated 70,000 toilet paper rolls after a Detroit Free Press story last November revealed that firefighters were pooling their own money to buy soap and toilet paper.
 
 
 

Low-Wage Workers Slammed by Obamacare

June 2nd, 2013 • 10:05 AM
In a speech given May 21 [1], Joe Hansen, president of the 1.3 million strong United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), blasted the Obama Administration for refusing the "treat non-profit healthcare" fairly, thus producing a devastating effect on his membership.
The UFCW is largedly comprised of low-wage workers, many of whom have high-quality, affordable health care through non-profit Taft-Hartley plans. These plans, according to Hansen, have better cost savings than for-profit insurers, but there's a catch—Obamacare will "block these plans from the law's benefits (such as the subsidy for lower-income individuals and families) while subjecting them to the law's penalties (like the $63 per insured person to subsidize Big Insurance)."
Hansen charges: "This creates unstoppable incentives for employers to reduce weekly hours for workers currently on our plans and push them onto the exchanges where many will pay higher costs for poorer insurance with a more limited network of providers. In other words, they will be forced to change their coverage and quite possibly their doctor. Others will be channeled into Medicaid, where taxpayers must pick up the tab."
On top of this, as Hansen pointed out and LPAC has ample confirmation of, many employers are now cutting the hours of their employees to 30 hours or below, because Obamacare does not require insurance for partime employees. This is already devastating millions of workers.
The UFCW is joined by other unions, including the Operating Engineers, Firefighters, and the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers.
 
 
 

Support[1] for HR129[2] and S.985[3]

U.S. Congressional Co-Sponsors to HR-129 (By Date of Signing)
  1. Rep Kaptur, Marcy [OH-9] (introduced 1/3/2013)
  2. Rep Jones, Walter B., Jr. [NC-3] - 1/3/2013
  3. Rep Michaud, Michael H. [ME-2] - 1/14/2013
  4. Rep McGovern, James P. [MA-2] - 1/15/2013
  5. Rep Moran, James P. [VA-8] - 1/22/2013
  6. Rep Capuano, Michael E. [MA-7] - 1/22/2013
  7. Rep Norton, Eleanor Holmes [DC] - 1/22/2013
  8. Rep Welch, Peter [VT] - 1/23/2013
  9. Rep Doggett, Lloyd [TX-35] - 1/23/2013
  10. Rep Cicilline, David N. [RI-1] - 2/6/2013
  11. Rep Chu, Judy [CA-27] - 2/6/2013
  12. Rep Lipinski, Daniel [IL-3] - 2/6/2013
  13. Rep Miller, George [CA-11] - 2/6/2013
  14. Rep Peterson, Collin C. [MN-7] - 2/12/2013
  15. Rep Slaughter, Louise McIntosh [NY-25] - 2/13/2013
  16. Rep Davis, Susan A. [CA-53] - 2/13/2013
  17. Rep Cummings, Elijah E. [MD-7] - 2/25/2013
  18. Rep Sanchez, Loretta [CA-46] - 2/25/2013
  19. Rep DeFazio, Peter A. [OR-4] - 2/25/2013
  20. Rep McDermott, Jim [WA-7] - 2/25/2013
  21. Rep Tierney, John F. [MA-6] - 2/25/2013
  22. Rep Alexander, Rodney [LA-5] - 2/25/2013
  23. Rep Pingree, Chellie [ME-1] - 2/25/2013
  24. Rep Schakowsky, Janice D. [IL-9] - 2/26/2013
  25. Rep Green, Gene [TX-29] - 2/26/2013
  26. Rep Coffman, Mike [CO-6] - 2/26/2013
  27. Rep Conyers, John, Jr. [MI-13] - 2/28/2013
  28. Rep Brady, Robert A. [PA-1] - 2/28/2013
  29. Rep Christensen, Donna M. [VI] - 2/28/2013
  30. Rep Grayson, Alan [FL-9] - 3/4/2013
  31. Rep Payne, Donald M., Jr. [NJ-10] - 3/4/2013
  32. Rep Visclosky, Peter J. [IN-1] - 3/11/2013
  33. Rep Eshoo, Anna G. [CA-18] - 3/11/2013
  34. Rep Walz, Timothy J. [MN-1] - 3/11/2013
  35. Rep DeLauro, Rosa L. [CT-3] - 3/11/2013
  36. Rep Rangel, Charles B. [NY-13] - 3/11/2013
  37. Rep Johnson, Eddie Bernice [TX-30] - 3/11/2013
  38. Rep Edwards, Donna F. [MD-4] - 3/12/2013
  39. Rep Tonko, Paul [NY-20] - 3/12/2013
  40. Rep Thompson, Bennie G. [MS-2] - 3/15/2013
  41. Rep Lee, Barbara [CA-13] - 3/15/2013
  42. Rep Brownley, Julia [CA-26] - 3/25/2013
  43. Rep Blumenauer, Earl [OR-3] - 3/25/2013
  44. Rep Dingell, John D. [MI-12] - 3/25/2013
  45. Rep Ellison, Keith [MN-5] - 3/25/2013
  46. Rep Fudge, Marcia L. [OH-11] - 3/25/2013
  47. Rep Johnson, Henry C. "Hank," Jr. [GA-4] - 3/25/2013
  48. Rep Hastings, Alcee L. [FL-20] - 4/9/2013
  49. Rep Hahn, Janice [CA-44] - 4/9/2013
  50. Rep Markey, Edward J. [MA-5] - 4/9/2013
  51. Rep Yarmuth, John A. [KY-3] - 4/9/2013
  52. Rep Jackson Lee, Sheila [TX-18] - 4/9/2013
  53. Rep Doyle, Michael F. [PA-14] - 4/9/2013
  54. Rep Speier, Jackie [CA-14] - 4/15/2013
  55. Rep Napolitano, Grace F. [CA-32] - 4/15/2013
  56. Rep Davis, Danny K. [IL-7] - 4/15/2013
  57. Rep Gabbard, Tulsi [HI-2] - 4/23/2013
  58. Rep Sinema, Kyrsten [AZ-9] - 4/23/2013
  59. Rep Garamendi, John [CA-3] - 4/30/2013
  60. Rep Faleomavaega, Eni F. H. [AS] - 4/30/2013
  61. Rep Lofgren, Zoe [CA-19] - 4/30/2013
  62. Rep Wilson, Frederica S. [FL-24] - 5/13/2013
  63. Rep Ryan, Tim [OH-13] - 5/13/2013
U.S. Senatorial Co-Sponsors to S.985 (By Date of Signing)
  1. Sponsor: Sen Harkin, Tom [IA] (introduced 5/16/2013)

Congress is in session; please call your congressman to co-sponsor H.R. 129[1] and your senators to co-sponsor S.985![2]   202-224-3121. Also call your state legislators and demand they introduce or co-sponsor a resolution calling for the U.S. Congress to pass both bills!

 
 
 
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