Date: 2025-07-03 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00012095
BANK REGULATION
GLASS-STEAGALL
Some key text from Glass-Steagall
GLASS-STEAGALL
Some key text from Glass-Steagall
“…Most of what people consider financial assets, are totally worthless. They're derivatives. They're gambling—they're side-bets on gambling for side-bets. They do not represent real, physical-economic assets. They're frauds.
We're talking about hundreds, or maybe quadrillions of nominal dollars out there, as the world's financial assets in debt—which ain't worth nuthin'! And it's gambling. It's as if you took the game of Monopoly, and you brought the game of Monopoly into Wall Street, and now you play with Monopoly money.
And you declare you have a great victory. And then somebody comes, and asks you to pay the bill for whatever they're serving that night, and they don't have any real money, they have only Monopoly money.
What happens? The game is over. And that's what we're dealing with. You're dealing with a system which is based on Monopoly money.
All these financial derivatives, this vast amount of money, all this bailout is all fake and fraudulent!
'So, what do we do, using Glass-Steagall approach? We take the entire system, reestablish Glass-Steagall, and under Glass-Steagall, we cancel all the Monopoly money. And we defend the integrity of legitimate obligations, of the type we have in regular banks. “…(S)ince 2007, especially since 2008, we have destroyed the integrity of the banking system…Excerpted from the May 8, 2010 Webcast Speech by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
So, we didn't do what we should have done. This rolled over, with the beginning of a series of swindles, into what happened 2008.
That was under Bush. Then we went, in order to cover the crimes we had committed, we went to bailout! And now, we have a hungry and desperate U.S. population, by and large. They're on the verge of mass starvation, literally, a total breakdown.
And the question is: Who do we support? Do we support the people of the United States? Do we support essential industries? Do we support municipalities and their functioning? Do we support the nation itself? Or, do we support foreigners, the bailout monsters, typified by the British Empire? We make that choice: We say, 'Well, we don't owe you guys a thing. We have a Constitution, and what's been happening to us, is a violation of our Constitution.' …
If we do as Franklin Roosevelt did, when Roosevelt saved the United States from a correspondingly similar catastrophe, in 1933, by Glass-Steagall. Glass-Steagall is not some wild innovation; it's simply the principle of the U.S. Federal Constitution. But it needed a specific law, addressed to a specific situation, to defend our nation against this threat. And that's Glass-Steagall….
Burgess COMMENTARY
I stumbled onto this part of my multi-decade archive of 'interesting information' more than a decade after it was archived.
I learned quite a lot about the nature of 'money' whan I was a student at Cambridge around 1960. I have revisited this question from time to time over the years, and am of the view that it is long overdue for a serious 'rethink' of the question.
Since I was a student, there have been substantial changes in the understanding and definition of money ... but I am not sure that money and its role in society and the economy is truly understood, rather I see it as being manipulated by different actors in their own interest.
I can be and should be criticised because I am clear that the way we think about money at the present time ... 2025 ... is broadly wrong and mainly self-serving ... but I am not able to describe how money should be defined and understood.
Peter Burgess