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Wall Street: Glass-Steagall Will Hit Hard

Aug. 2, 2016 (EIRNS)—Confirming that Wall Street is the driver and location of resistance to restoring Glass-Steagall through the Congress, a Wall Street consulting firm has whipped up a study of the impacts to be expected from reinstating Glass-Steagall. The report by Keefe, Bruyette and Woods (KBW) is a direct response to the appearance of Glass-Steagall "planks" in both parties’ presidential platforms. It was report on the Wall Street TV network CNBC on Aug. 1, under the headline "Glass-Steagall’s Return Threatens Wall Street."

KBW finds that restored Glass-Steagall would impose "penalties" on all the big banks, most severely on JPM Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America (which would lose Merrill-Lynch).

And they do understand what it would do: "Re-instituting Glass-Steagall as law could include fully splitting investment and commercial banking businesses, limiting commercial banks’ subsidiaries to underwrite only government-issued securities, prohibiting investment banks from taking deposits, and forbidding interlocking roles between investment and commercial banks for directors or managers. In other words, it would undo a lot of things that have changed in the banking business."

KBW also advises that "investors" should not expect increased valuation of the speculative operations that get broken off from the commercial banks—just the opposite.

The fact of the matter—which they do not recognize—is that most of these speculative shops would go bankrupt in the current economic and financial collapse.

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