Americans should not tolerate a Congress that held hearings on “getting tough with Wall Street,” and then went into recess for months while Wall Street mugs bank depositors, small businesses, mortgage holders, and working people every day.

The Wall Street giants are looting their deposit/lending banks, pumping up their speculative casino units, and heading for a financial blowout triggered by the bankrupt European banking giants. Today a new scandal emerged of Wells Fargo cheating small business clients of its retail brokerage division; and a new expose of Deutsche Bank creating many derivatives contracts meant to “disappear” assets or liabilities from its balance sheet, in the manner of Enron. Deutsche Bank’s world-largest mass of derivatives is also classified as the world’s most dangerous, capable of taking scores of big banks into the crash with it.

Millions of Americans now realize — and just in time — that re-enacting Franklin Roosevelt’s Glass-Steagall Act is the unique way to stop the burgeoning criminal activity of the likes of Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo, and restore a sound banking system before it becomes too late for the U.S. economy.

Now is too late for hundreds of members of Congress to be giving out the vague impression that they’d “like to” break up the Wall Street banks. The American people have to make them return to Capitol Hill and do it, by restoring Glass-Steagall. Those who think that only another 2008 crash will finally push the nation’s elected officials to restore FDR’s policies, must think again. It will push them, instead, into another, bigger, panicked bank bailout, more deeply impoverishing the economy and the American people. They must be brought to enact Glass-Steagall before that crash takes place.

That will only begin the work of reviving growth, productivity, productive employment in the U.S. economy, after 15 years of failure by Bush and Obama. But it will create the opportunity for Rooseveltian national credit policy, new infrastructure development, accelerated scientific progress and a revived space exploration program.

But Glass-Steagall and a new economic paradigm are now life or death. Obama’s failed economic growth, defeat on trade agreements, and Russia’s strategic success in Syria are driving the White House toward direct provocation of war with Russia. There is tremendous opposition in Europe and Asia, but “planning” for what may become World War III is underway in the Obama White House and Defense Department.

Tell Congress — in their districts for a grim, no-choice election, to return and enact the legislation necessary to pull the country out of this crisis, legislation that informed Americans are demanding. The lame duck is too late; do it now.