PRESS RELEASE
European Parliamentarians Tour Hill Asking for Glass-Steagall
March 4, 2016 (EIRNS)—European Parliamentarians (MEPs) invited to the United States capital by EIR, spent March 1-3 in intensive meetings on Capitol Hill asking Members of Congress to break up Wall Street by restoring the Glass-Steagall Act, and give a push to widespread European constituency bank separation efforts.
MEPs Marco Zanni and Marco Valli met with eleven Members of the House from both parties—some Glass-Steagall sponsors and others on the fence—and told them
"we are standing before another global crisis of the financial system, and we need to act now in both the United States and Europe."
The two represent Italy’s Five Star Movement Party, now Italy’s second-largest, whose Delegates have put in five of the nine Glass-Steagall bills in the Italian Parliament. They were able to convey in strong detail the chaos, impoverishment, and banking crisis triggered since "bank bail-in" rules went into effect across the European Union at the end of 2015.
Strong offers of collaboration were extended to the MEPs by several Glass-Steagall sponsors. Others told them about the fight riving the Democratic Party in particular, over Glass-Steagall vs. the Dodd-Frank Act. The primary election has intensified this fight in Congress as well.
Many Members have noticed that two Federal Reserve bank presidents have recently told them that Dodd-Frank will only lead to another gargantuan bank bailout, and suggested that they break up Wall Street instead. The first of those warnings, by Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, was widely reported in national and international media, and is still being debated two weeks later.
The Italian MEPs, with EIR, also met with staff of more than a dozen other Members, including the Democratic leadership of both House and Senate. It was clear from those meetings that the party’s Congressional leadership has formed a defensive line for Dodd-Frank and against Glass-Steagall. The leadership offices, equally aware of the constituency strength of the fight against Wall Street, were extremely interested to know what the European Parliamentarians and EIR were doing about it. There were indications that Members of Congress who support Hillary Clinton for President are not to be sponsors of Glass-Steagall.
H.R. 381, the House bill to restore Glass-Steagall, now has 71 sponsors.
