Restore Glass-Steagall - Separate Commercial Banking from Speculation

By separating commercial and investment banking, we can restore the United States to sanity. Since Gramm-Leach-Bliley repealed Glass-Steagall (aka The Banking Act of 1933) in 1999, the stage has been set for too big to fail. In 2008, it happened, and we initiated the TARP program.

To date, TARP has transferred trillions and trillions of dollars from taxpayers to International and Wall St. financiers, to cover the bad debts they incurred gambling in the derivatives market. Now our politicians (the majority of whom get massive campaign contributions from these massive banks and the multinationals they service) want to impose drastic austerity measures on the American people in order to continue this transfer of assets. It will not work, because the gambling debts of the bankers are too massive.

If we continue with TARP and austerity, people will die and we still won't have a balanced budget. If we restore Glass-Steagall, we can end TARP and write off the speculative debt. The speculators will go bankrupt, but the savings, mortgages and small business loans of average citizens will be protected. This will bring the deficit down to a managable level, restore the value of the dollar, and set the stage for an actual economic recovery.