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Glass-Steagall: Canada’s New Peace Mission
15 November 2012
A sound economic prescription must urgently be applied, globally, if we are to prevent the world from careening into a spiral of hyperinflation that would open the door to WWIII. Without putting, firstly, all nations of the trans-Atlantic region immediately under the U.S. equivalent of a Roosevelt-era Glass-Steagall reform, there could be no viable economic future possible in any nation on either side of the Atlantic. In North America, the other emergency follow up measures would have to include the emission of large amounts of public productive credit through a newly established system of national banks, in order to fund a North American continent-wide project such as NAWAPA and other capital-intensive investments in basic economic infrastructure such as maglev trains and high energy-flux density sources of energy, typified presently by fourth generation nuclear power plants and the future development of fusion energy. The world’s major nations must exercise their full sovereign authority and use all economic levers that can bring under control those political processes that are presently engendering, in different regions of the world, several new “Balkans cockpits” that can become detonators for a thermonuclear World War III. The existential question of the survival of sovereign nation-states will be decided in the months ahead, perhaps in an even shorter time frame: Either sovereign nation-states will demonstrate their moral fitness to survive by implementing a global Glass-Steagall against a disintegrating financial empire or a doomed imperial system, centred in the extended monarchy and the bowels of the City, will manipulate its puppet-in-chief Obama to engage in a desperate and deadly game of nuclear brinksmanship against Russia and China! Therefore, will a strong united call for sanity in world affairs be heard from the Canadian Parliament? Will Canadian political parties abandon partisanship in order to urgently promote on the world stage a more just new world economic order? The hubris to defeat the British Empire Prime Minister Louis St.Laurent often quoted epithet of “liberals in a hurry” correctly characterized the CCF then and the early NDP. In the postwar years, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation would claim credit for an expansion of welfare legislation in Ottawa through their insistence that the two major parties take their responsibilities towards the “working class”. Pensions, unemployment insurance, family allowances, improved labour laws were all voted up in the House of Commons by the governing party adopting elements of the CCF social agenda. In the years following the creation of the NDP, the minority government of Lester Pearson also adopted some NDP policies such as the Canada Pension Plan, a nation-wide universal healthcare plan and a minimum 40-hour work week. But what must now be accomplished in this turning-point period of history calls for a large dose of hubris on the part of all political parties in the Canadian Parliament. How to put the superior interest of the nation above party politics? No more simply forcing the adoption of legislation by a minority government under the threat that a government coalition party will pull out and defeat the government. But rather can the opposition work with the Conservative majority government to pass in the House of Commons banking legislation that would be the equivalent of a Roosevelt-era Glass-Steagall reform? Were the Official Opposition to take the lead in pulling together a coalition of patriotic MPs from across both sides of the aisle in the House of Commons that would be successfull in getting Canada to become one of the first Parliaments in the world to enact Glass-Steagall legislation, that action would certainly have a transformative influence on specially the social democratic governments of Europe. More broadly, it would represent an efficient beacon of hope for other nations and peoples. Across Canada it would certainly inspire and uplift social democrats and other left of centre political activists that have been generally worn out through the years by a series of endless inefficient demands calling for “humanizing” globalization through conferences and demos bankrolled by oligarchs such as Teddy Goldsmith and George Soros. Through a single potent legislation, a Glass-Steagall applied globally, sovereign nations can now eliminate the British Empire’s capability for worldwide looting and genocide. The subsequent bank reform and world infrastructure projects mentioned above in paragraphs two and three, will solidify a community of principle among sovereign nation-states that will ensure that development now becomes the new name for peace. Parliamentarians should look up to a famous Englishman who, over 236 years ago, set about to educate and transform citizens of the New World, that were ready to break with the Monarchy, into republicans that rapidly grew in numbers and became an effective intellectual force that was ultimately capable of defeating the most powerful empire the world had known. Thomas Paine wrote presciently these famous words in 1776: “These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love of man and woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heavens knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.” Gilles Gervais |