Overview

The bankruptcy reorganization needed for our crumbling economic system today, which lies at the root of the LaRouche Plan, means removing all support for the Monetary system. All illegitimate debt claims on monetary assets of whatever form, will be canceled. The Glass-Steagall standard must be applied to all banking, and any bank engaged in deposit banking-functions will not be legally allowed to engage in speculation, and vice versa. No longer should purely fictitious monetary activity be financed; all financial activity must re-establish its functional relationship with those activities of the physical economy which define real economic value -- those activities which increase the productive powers of labor of our nation's workforce, the potential population density of our nation's territory, and the increase in technology and power available for our nation's manufacturers and farmers. This action, of bankruptcy reorganization, will free our national economy from the looming demise of the present system, and towards a more ideal configuration -- an economic system free from the disease of imperial monetarism.

To that end, we have authored a resolution to be circulated and passed by local governments, sponsored and endorsed by policy makers and legislators, to identify a broadened call among the population and within institutions for a return to a legitimate economic system, and the intentions of our founding fathers.

Our Glass-Steagall Resolution: (Updated: July 8, 2010)

To Save Our Nation Congress Must Pass Glass-Steagall and Shut Down Derivatives Now!

WHEREAS, the reimposition of the Constitutional Glass-Steagall principles that separate commercial from speculative banking, and the shutdown of the hundreds of trillions of dollar derivatives casino--both measures which have been strongly promoted and supported by leading economist Lyndon LaRouche--are the indispensable, and inseparable, first steps for saving the U.S. economy from imminent disintegration, and creating the basis for the launching of a real economic recovery program based on massive infrastructure projects; and

WHEREAS, the leadership of the U.S. Congress, under the direction of President Barack Obama, has sabotaged the inclusion of the Cantwell-McCain Glass-Steagall amendment into the so-called financial reform bill, effectively capitulating to a British ultimatum, and thus leaving our banking system vulnerable to the ongoing relatively immediate threat of a general, and even total blowout of the world financial system, as such is anticipated by the current freeze-up of bank lending, and the 1000 point "flash" drop in the U.S. stock market; and

WHEREAS, that same Congressional leadership, under pressure from the Obama Administration and Wall St., has similarly removed any effective action in respect to the trading of derivatives from the so-called reform bill, giving the major Wall St. banks expanded authority over the decimated U.S. economy,

THEREFORE, be it resolved that ________________ demands that Congress immediately act to restore FDR's Glass-Steagall legislation, and to adopt measures which will lead to the total shutdown of the cancerous derivatives market, by the immediate application of an exact renewal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's precisely stated, and intended Glass-Steagall legislation, without which both the United States itself, and the planet in general, could not avoid an already prevalent process of a global general collapse of, and among the nations of, all of the planet's continents.

A print friendly, PDF version is also available.

A. Glass-Steagall

1. A Global Glass Steagall, Now!

By Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. - Today, without a kind of Glass Steagall reform, which would virtually wipe out the monetarist features of both Wall Street's and of the City of London's systems, the chances for escaping an already oncoming, planet-wide, "new dark age," were virtually "zilch"!

3. Why We Must Return to FDR’s Glass Steagall

By John Hoefle - Banks are, or should be, creatures of their local or regional economies, whose job is to assist the development of their service areas. The success of a bank is the byproduct of the success of the economy.

4. A Glass-Steagall for Europe: Outlaw Currency Speculation

By Helga Zepp-LaRouche - It is unacceptable to have "all-star" managers of the largest hedge funds decide, over a private dinner in Manhattan, to speculate on a collapse of the euro down to a 1:1 parity with the dollar, which would slash, by a quarter or a third, the economic wealth of those people who have the misfortune of living in the Eurozone.

5. On the Subject of Strategic Bankruptcy

By Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. - Bankruptcies, or comparable collapses of the general class typified by these cases, can not be absorbed safely within the private sector as presently constituted. The Federal government must create the institution, the mechanism of re-regulation, and applicable formulas through which strategic problems of this general magnitude and importance are addressed.

B. The American Precedent

1. Alexander Hamilton’s Reports to Congress

Alexander Hamilton first laid out his broad and ambitious plans for lifting our fledgling nation out of bankruptcy to congress at the outset of his term as Secretary of the Treasury. While many of the mechanisms would function differently today, the core principles of Hamilton’s creation of the American System of Political Economy are the standard for today’s needed reforms, and provide the idealogical blue-print for the establishment of a Third National Bank.

2. How Lincoln Took on Wall-Street to Win the Civil War

By Rochelle Ascher - The fundamental turning point in U.S. history concerning restoration of the American System and defeating the British plan to balkanize and forever destroy the United States through its support of the Confederacy, centered on the issues of how to finance the government, and the civil war that was facing Lincoln in December 1861.

3. Harry Hopkins: The American System Versus Feudalism and Fascism

Edited by Anton Chaitkin - “All over the world, men and women who love human freedom are looking to the United States to find the answer—the proper economic and social balance that will make democracy safe”