European Blowout Makes Glass-Steagall Urgent, Now!

May 7, 2010 (LPAC)—In addition to action in the U.S. Senate for reinstating of Glass Steagall, David Komansky, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, is the latest Wall Street figure to come out publicly in support of the restoration of Glass Steagall. In an interview with Bloomberg on May 5, Komansky confessed, "Unfortunately, I was one of the people who led the charge to try to get Glass-Steagall repealed. I regret those activities and wish we hadn't done that." Komansky joins former Citigroup CEO John Reed, who made the same mea culpa in January of this year.

Lyndon LaRouche today linked this building energy around Glass-Steagall, particularly the Cantwell-McCain amendment to the Dodd bill, to the blowout of the European financial system. "One of the reasons there is so much energy around Glass-Steagall is that anyone with half a brain recognizes that the entire European system is in a breakdown. And unless there is immediate passage of Glass-Steagall, you cannot save the United States from a chain-reaction collapse. There is energy because there are people in the system with brains enough to realize that we are in an existential crisis.

"For a change," LaRouche continued, "the intentions behind the actions of some people in Congress are being driven by reality."

While the panic over the European contagion continued to grab headlines today, LaRouche focused on a deeper level of the collapse of the entire European Monetary Union, a level that must be comprehended to understand what must be done. "The center of the now-onrushing collapse of Europe must be traced back to the British policy that was set in motion from 1987-1992, through Margaret Thatcher, Francois Mitterrand and George H.W. Bush. Their Maastricht policy, combined with the Greenspan Fed policy of promoting derivatives as the response to the stock market crash of 1987, created a financial and monetary bomb that is now exploding. This is the biggest financial bomb in human history. The explosion is now centered in the Rothschild-linked Inter-Alpha Group, and in Britain, Brazil, Spain and the entire European Monetary Union zone. The bomb was ready to blow. But it was detonated by the stupid handling of the Greece. So, now, Europe has blown up, and the only sane option is for the United States to act immediately, to save itself from the contagion.

"The United States must take action to protect itself from the disintegration of the British System, which has already happened. Who cares about the British System? No one in their right mind cares. But, to save the rest of Europe, the United States must act first, by immediately reinstating Glass Steagall; because, if the United States goes down, the rest of the world goes down."

LaRouche concluded, "So Glass Steagall—the Cantwell-McCain amendment to the Dodd bill—is now the patriotic litmus test, for every member of the U.S. Senate, for starters. We must save the United States from the European disease. Anyone who is not with us on that is either unpatriotic, or insane, or both."

WEBCAST: 8. MAY  http://www.larouchepac.com