LaRouche: Keep Mnuchin Out of Treasury, Avoid Economic Collapse
January 22, 2017
Call the Senate Finance Committee and tell them to reject Steven Mnuchin's nomination for Treasury Secretary!
As late as the close of business on this last Friday, it was expected that Senate Finance Committee was unlikely to vote on the nomination until early February. In a surprise move, Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch announced that he was scheduling a vote to send the Mnuchin nomination to the full Senate Monday night. It is expected that several members of the committee are likely to object until they have received answers to written questions that they had forwarded to the nominee. Chairman Hatch may or may not honor those objections. If the vote takes place as he announced, members of the committee have 3 options: they can recommend that the full Senate approve the nomination, they can recommend rejection, or they can vote to make no recommendation at all.
Once the Committee vote takes place, the nomination moves to the full Senate. The nomination must be on the Senate Executive Calendar for more than one day before it can make it to the Senate floor for consideration. Unanimous consent of the time and date for debate must be agreed upon by all senators. If even one senator does not agree, a hold is placed on the nomination.
At the point that the nomination is moved to the Senate floor, unlimited debate is allowed until a majority of the Senate votes to invoke cloture, closing debate. Following a vote of cloture, the Senate conducts a simple majority vote on whether to confirm, reject or take no action on the nomination.
The Senate Finance Committee members are:
Chairman, Orrin Hatch (R-UT) 202-224-5251
Ranking Minority Leader, Ron Wyden (D-OR) 202-244-5244
Chuck Grassley (R-IA) 202-224-3744
Debbie Stabenow (D - MI) 202-224-4822
Mike Crapo (R - ID) 202-224-6142
Maria Cantwell (D - WA) 202-224-3441
Pat Roberts (R - KS) 202-224-4774
Bill Nelson (D - FL) 202-224-5274
Michael B. Enzi (R - WY) 202-224-3424
Robert Menendez (D - NJ) 202-224-4744
John Cornyn (R - TX) 202-224-2934
Thomas R. Carper (D - DE) 202-224-2441
John Thune (R - SD) 202-224-2321
Benjamin L. Cardin (D - MD) 202-224-4524
Richard Burr (R - NC) 202-224-3154
Sherrod Brown (D - OH) 202-224-2315
Johnny Isakson (R - GA) 202-224-3643
Michael F. Bennet (D - CO) 202-224-5852
Rob Portman (R - OH) 202-224-3353
Robert P. Casey, Jr. (D - PA) 202-224-6324
Patrick J. Toomey (R - PA) 202-224-4254
Mark R. Warner (D - VA) 202-224-2023
Dean Heller (R - NV) 202-224-6244
Claire McCaskill (D - MO) 202-224-6154
Tim Scott (R - SC) 202-224-6121
Bill Cassidy (R - LA) 202-224-5824
After misrepresenting and opposing the Glass-Steagall Act in his confirmation hearings, Steven Mnuchin is a "destructive force" who should be kept out of the Trump Administration Treasury, said economist and EIR Founding Editor Lyndon LaRouche yesterday. "He can't be accepted for what he was claiming to be; he's not qualified," LaRouche added, and "he'll make a mess in the Trump Administration. Trump could come out successfully on the Glass-Steagall issue; but this guy will mess it up."
WATCH VIDEO HERE
As nominee for Treasury Secretary, Mnuchin's exchanges with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), who has been a lead sponsor of legislation to restore Glass-Steagall, constituted her entire questioning period during the Senate Finance Committee hearing. Despite President Trump having called for "going back to Glass-Steagall" during the campaign, Mnuchin stated his opposition to it. Cantwell pressed the Republican Party platform's call for restoring Glass-Steagall; she also cited official estimates that a huge $14 trillion in economic losses to Americans resulted from the 2007-08 bank blowout, and that Glass-Steagall restoration was necessary to prevent that from happening again now.
Lyndon LaRouche said:
"Senator Cantwell's presentation of the case was valid, and it was a case by which she is trying to save this nation. We're on the fringe of what could be a terrible collapse."
Mnuchin's response to Cantwell was, "No, I don't support going back to Glass-Steagall as is." He said that he supported the Volcker Rule of the Dodd-Frank Act if modified.
Moreover, Mnuchin made a serious false claim to the Committee, in support of his opposition to Glass-Steagall. He claimed Glass-Steagall, according to a recent Federal Reserve report, "would have very big implication to the liquidity and the capital markets, and banks being able to perform necessary lending." In other words, that Glass-Steagall would result in a less liquid bond market for economic investments, and less lending by banks.
The truth is that this Federal Reserve Report, released this past September, criticized the Volcker Rule on that point, not the Glass-Steagall Act. It is titled, "The Volcker Rule and Market Making in Times of Stress." Its main finding is that "bonds are less liquid during times of stress due to the Volcker Rule." But Mnuchin was distressing the Committee Republicans and large numbers of bankers themselves, by supporting a Volcker Rule.
As to Glass-Steagall and bank credit: FDIC Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig has repeatedly given expert opinion to Congress and other institutions that during the roughly 60 years when Glass-Steagall was enforced, the United States' capital markets for bank lending and bond issuance were the strongest and deepest in the world.
LaRouche emphasized Jan. 22 that Mnuchin is "doing dirty work which can lead to a deadly collapse in the United States and elsewhere. With what he was pushing, he could cause a crisis which would rapidly bring down the U.S. economy as a whole. We have a new financial system coming about [referring to the international development institutions of China and the BRICS-allied nations]; and here, that begins with restoring Glass-Steagall. So this is international, not only national, in importance."
"I think there is no other option but to state that he must be gotten out" of the Treasury, LaRouche concluded.
Sign Petition: Restore Glass-Steagall
SUPPORTING MATERIAL
Keep George Soros' Ally Steven Mnuchin Away from Trump Treasury!
George Soros, a long-time agent of British influence, megaspeculator, and nation-wrecker, is the self-avowed leading financial force in the drive to ruin or even bring down the Donald Trump presidency. He was also a leading, if not the primary, sponsor of Barack Obama to the presidency. It is a deadly error that a years-long employee, partner, and co-investor with Soros, Steven Mnuchin, may be about to become President Trump's Treasury Secretary!
Soros -- who has already backed a mass march to Washington against Trump and is backing a completely meritless "constitutional" lawsuit to try to impeach him, has employed or worked with Treasury Secretary-Designate Steven Mnuchin in financial speculations for nearly 15 years. Soros said at Davos, "I personally am convinced he [ Trump ] is going to fail... I want him to fail."
A Mnuchin confirmation threatens to destroy President Trump's promise to rebuild the U.S. economy.
Donald Trump's administration won the support of the American people with campaign promises to modernize America's infrastructure, and build high-speed rail, modern ports, and technologically advanced manufacturing. This implies that America would again have a space program, like China and Russia, which would increase the productivity of the U.S. economy just as JFK's "Moonshot" did in 1969. The United States and the world need thermonuclear fusion power -- the energy that powers the sun, and emits simple helium as its by-product, to propel planetary exploration.
Steven Mnuchin at Treasury will not let this happen; he opposes restoring the Glass-Steagall Act which Trump promised "in order to get credit flowing to small businesses again;" he invests with the speculator Soros, who brings down governments by financial manipulation and by funding "color revolutions."
Mnuchin has been joined in politics and finances with George Soros since at least 2002. After 12 years at Goldman Sachs -- think of pro-Wall Street Secretaries like Robert Rubin and Hank Paulson -- Mnuchin was recruited by George Soros to run the Soros-backed SFM Capital, which was created to buy "risky assets." Mnuchin also worked for Soros Fund Managment. Backed by Soros, he founded Dune Capital Management with former Goldman colleagues.
Nathan Vardi wrote in Forbes July 22, 2014, "A gang made up of some of Wall Street's biggest names and Goldman Sachs partner Steve Mnuchin, who served as its CEO, is set to realize a big score from the sale of One West Bank to CIT group for $3.4 billion." This "gang" of hedge funds was Soros Capital Management and six other funds, who bought IndyMac and made Mnuchin CEO of the renamed One West.
"In 2009," Vardi continued, "the buyout group bought the assets of the former Indy Mac from the FDIC, which had seized its assets. The group paid $1.55 billion for the bank in the teeth of the financial crisis," Vardi wrote. Indy MAC was the second biggest bank failure of the financial crisis, and the taxpayer-funded FDIC agreed to share the losses on a portfolio of loans. Mnuchin's group bought Indy Mac Bank, which foreclosed on tens of thousands of homeowners, for 1.55 billions; changed its name to One West Bank, and sold it to the CIT group for $3.4 billion in July 2014. Soros Management had partnered with six other hedge funds to acquire Indy Mac."
The Soros-Mnuchin connection was so durable that one financial website, ZeroHedge, wrote on Nov. 11, just after Donald Trump's election, that "Soros Fund Management employee Steven Mnuchin" was being groomed for something bigger in the Trump Administration.
The 2008 mortgage and general financial crisis could never have happened if the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act had not been repealed by agents of Wall Street speculators. There would have been no bailout for speculators. In his campaign, President Trump and the Republican Party Platform supported Glass-Steagall's re-enactment. But when the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on Mnuchin's confirmation, Mnuchin told Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) that he did not and would not support the re-enactment of the 1933 Glass-Steagall law. There is no other Glass-Steagall to support, though Mnuchin tried to invent one.
George Soros thinks and hopes President Donald Trump will fail. In a video interview from the World Economic Forum at Davos on Jan. 19, 2017, Soros told Bloomberg's Francine Laqua, "I personally am convinced he [ Trump ] is going to fail; not because of people like me, who would like him to fail, but because the ideas that guide him are inherently self-contradictory. The contradictions are already embodied in his advisors ... and, by his Cabinet. Therefore, you'll have the various establishments fighting with each other, and cause a very unpredictable outcome... unpredictable is the enemy of long-term."
More than just Soros, London wants to get control of the Trump Presidency, turn it back to Obama's war confrontations against Russia AND China, and to "globalization." Soros's man is London's and Wall Street's man. He must be kept out of the Treasury.
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