Ms. KAPTUR. The greatest power a banker has is to create money. Banks can also abuse that awesome power. And it seems like the bigger the banks are the more they abuse that power. Let me relate a vivid example:

It was over 5 years ago that America was hit with the great Wall Street-induced recession. Five years later, those banks are still paying our people--their customers--almost nothing if customers have deposits or certificates of deposit with those institutions. That is harming seniors across this country. That is harming people who are trying to make a go of it. It is harming investors. Meanwhile, banks continue to post huge profits, especially the very biggest ones that are market controllers--for example, JPMorgan Chase, just in the last year, took $21 billion in profit; Wells Fargo, $19 billion; Goldman Sachs, $7.5 billion in profits; Citigroup, $7.5 billion; Bank of America, $4 billion--while Americans continue to struggle to make ends meet and recuperate from that Great Recession.

Now, it has been reported this week that JPMorgan Chase will agree to a $13 billion settlement of the civil suit filed by the United States Department of Justice and the Federal Housing Finance Agency in order to resolve several investigations into their fraudulent mortgage securities business. One question I have with that $13 billion: Are they actually going to pay it, or is JPMorgan Chase going to use it as a deduction on their taxes as a business expense or some other tax dodge that their accountants and lawyers figure out?

From September 7, 2005, through September 19, 2007, JPMorgan and its affiliates knowingly misrepresented the value and quality of their mortgage bonds that it sold to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The result of their actions are reverberating still throughout our economy, as foreclosure rates in places like Ohio continue to go up. They are still above the national average. In August, foreclosure starts in Ohio were up 44 percent from the previous month, for a total that month of 9,542 foreclosure filings. Tens of thousands of people are being affected from coast to coast.

Minority neighborhoods were especially harmed by the financial crisis. A report by the Urban Institute estimates the loss of home equity in African American households as a result of the foreclosure crisis is at $194 billion. All the wealth that was accumulated since World War II vaporized. They were hit very hard.

Hispanic communities lost $177 billion in home equity during the same time period. Awesome.

Although a settlement has been reached in this particular case, this should not be the end of the investigation into Wall Street banks because JPMorgan and their brethren have proven to be repeat offenders. Criminal charges should be pursued, not just civil.

This settlement is just one of many recent penalties that JP has had to pay. In June 2011, JPMorgan had to pay $153 million in penalties to the Securities and Exchange Commission for misleading investors about a collateralized debt obligation. In August 2012, the bank had to pay $1.2 billion for what it had done to conspire with VISA and MasterCard to set the price of credit card and debit interchange fees.

In July of this year, JPMorgan had to pay $410 million in penalties and repayments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for revealing that the bank had been manipulating the California and Midwest electricity markets from September 2010 to November 2012. JPMorgan Chase had to pay a $100 million fine for reckless conduct and market manipulation in connection with its 2012 London Whale trading scandal.

The question I have: Can they deduct any of these penalties from the taxes they pay, or are they really paying back in full those penalties to the government of the United States free and clear to pay back the American people for their criminal behavior?

In the past 3 years, JPMorgan has posted year-after-year record profits, driven by their stock prices. Last year, the firm made $21.3 billion. Therefore, with this recent settlement, it would be about only half of their most recent profits. For a frame of reference, there are only seven Dow Jones Industrial Average companies that made more than $13 billion profits last year.

We can say to ourselves, Would these fines, if they were really paid, do any harm to JPMorgan? Think about this. They have $87 billion in reserves and their total assets are valued, by their own accounts, at over $2.25 trillion. That is a ``wow,'' by any account.

The result of all of this misbehavior is many Americans have lost all of their accumulated equity.

Mr. Speaker, it is time to restore prudent banking. I ask my colleagues to sign on to H.R. 129, the Return To Prudent Banking Act of 2013. Let's restore the Glass-Steagall Act and the value of our money.

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