The introduction in the U.S. Senate of a bill to restore GlassSteagall bank separation, combined with reports that this has the support of key individuals in the Trump White House (cf. SAS 15-16/17), provoked a flurry of panicked articles in the British press, followed by an echo from the same American newspapers that are promoting the inane British-scripted fraud that President Trump is controlled by Russian President Putin.

The Senate bill, S. 881, was introduced by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and has four other cosponsors. Most notable among them is Maria Cantwell of Washington State, who has been actively engaged with Trump administration officials in a dialogue on breaking up the banks, and who issued a call for a public mobilization to support the bill. This was too much for the City of London’s Financial Times, which responded with articles on April 10, April 13, and April 17, all of which made the same points.

1.) Glass-Steagall probably will not pass. (If so, then why waste so much ink attacking it?)

2.) If it did pass, it would be “invasive,” “disruptive,” and would set off a “conflagration.” (Of course. Its very purpose is to disrupt the speculative frenzies of traders, hedge fund operators, and other shadow banking operations, which make super profits for the bankers while denying credit to the real economy!)

3.) Had Glass-Steagall not been repealed in 1999, it would not have prevented the 2008 crash.

This latter point, which has been pushed by City of London EIR STRATEGIC ALERT n°17 / 2017 WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 3 and Wall Street funded think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, is an intellectual fraud. It denies the involvement of commercial banks in pumping up the housing bubble.

Not surprisingly, the Washington Post had an editorial on April 19, and an op ed on the 22nd, repeating the same nonsense. The New York Times joined in on April 21, referring to Glass-Steagall as one of “many silly ideas floating around Washington”; arguing that it has not passed in previous efforts “because it was a bad idea” (and not because of the millions spent by lobbyists from the Too Big to Fail banks to stop its passage).

The article concludes that it is “some outdated, cockamamie notion,” that governments have the right to regulate banks! To these fake news outlets, Glass-Steagall is as big a threat to mankind as Trump talking to Putin! In reality, it is only a threat to those committed to maintaining the bankrupt financial system.

E.I.R., Strategic Alert, The Schiller Institute