From the Australian Alert Service - 3 May 2017 President Donald Trump directly reaffirmed his support for a “21st Century Glass-Steagall” bill in a Bloomberg News interview of 2 May, saying, “I’m looking into that right now. … There’s some people that want to go back to the old system, right? So we’re going to look at that.” Trump’s words change the prospects of getting Glass-Steagall through the US Congress. Senior editor of Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, David Hawkings, told Washington, DC radio on 18 April that Glass-Steagall can become one of the top legislative items in Congress overnight if the administration’s support becomes clear and public. In light of the oncoming financial crisis, the President must now explicitly call upon the leadership of Congress to pass Glass-Steagall legislation. Trump’s latest statement came during a 30-minute interview by Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs and Margaret Talev. A secondary report on Bloomberg noted that although Trump’s campaign statements on Glass-Steagall had “roiled” the “more moderate” (free-trade) Republicans, “the grassroots base of the Republican and the Democratic Parties—people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—have both advocated for the return of Glass-Steagall.” An hour after the interview, Presidential Press Secretary Sean Spicer noted Trump’s meeting with the Independent Community Bankers of America, and the fact that he is “looking at 21st-Century Glass-Steagall”. Later Spicer said, in answer to a question, “He [Trump] talked about it in the campaign. He’s mentioned before, his idea of a 21st-Century Glass-Steagall, a modernisation of it. We’re not at a point where we’re able to roll out details at this time. He is actively considering options on it.” Financial press in New York and London have been full of attacks on Glass-Steagall for the past four weeks, for fear the President might do exactly this. The juggernaut of an imminent implosion of corporate debt (below) and the timely introduction of Glass-Steagall bills in both the US House and Senate has catalysed much discussion about how to handle the impending blowout. Glass-Steagall really hit the headlines at the point legislation was introduced into the US Senate, the day after Trump’s chief economic advisor Gary Cohn supported the banking regulation in a private 5 April meeting with members of the Senate Banking Committee. A follow-up report on the discussion of Glass-Steagall by Cohn, responding to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s question at that meeting, confirms that it was not vague, grudging or a mere passing remark, but was the most extensive and detailed comment that Cohn made about any subject in that meeting. In response to a Republican Senator there, Cohn reportedly again discussed investment bank vs. commercial bank “culture”, and his view that they should not be combined in the same financial institution. An explosion of attacks against the proposal subsequently swept the financial media; it would be difficult to name a financial publication or media source which has not attacked or “debunked” the Glass-Steagall Act since that time. With deep support in the population and broad bipartisan support in the Congress, the City of London and Wall Street are obviously extremely worried about the passage of Glass-Steagall.