Elizabeth Warren Calls for New Version of Glass-Steagall

WASHINGTON — Citing the $2 billion loss at JPMorgan Chase, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren is calling for the enactment of a new version of the Glass-Steagall Act.

"A new Glass-Steagall would separate high-risk investment banks from more traditional banking," Warren wrote in a letter to supporters. "It would allow Wall Street to take risks, but not by dipping into the life savings and retirement accounts of regular people."

"And by making banks smaller, a new Glass-Steagall could also help put an end to banks that are 'too big to fail' — further avoiding costly taxpayer bailouts."

Warren, the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, urged her supporters to sign a petition calling for the enactment of a new Glass-Steagall. The petition, which had more than 3,000 signatures by mid-afternoon Monday, was issued with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a group that works to elect progressive candidates to Congress.

Warren, a Democrat who was the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is locked in a tight race with Republican Sen. Scott Brown.

She is using the JPMorgan Chase episode to highlight her financial-policy experience.

"If I'm elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, I promise this difference from my Republican opponent Scott Brown: I will be a reliable and strong champion for commonsense Wall Street reform," she wrote in the letter to supporters.

Since the JPMorgan Chase news broke on Thursday, Warren has also called for CEO Jamie Dimon to resign from the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.