One Reason We Are Where We Are...
Bill Clinton repealed the Glass Act in 1999. The Glass Act was created in 1933 after the crash of 1929 and America had seen what happens when the banking system is given too much power. It is the love of money that is the root of all evil, not the money. Stop blaming each other. The Clinton administration set into action what we are seeing now.
From wikipedia..In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bankers and brokers were sometimes indistinguishable. Then, in the Great Depression after 1929, Congress examined the mixing of the commercial and investment banking industries that occurred in the 1920s. Hearings revealed conflicts of interest and fraud in some banking institutions?? securities activities. A formidable barrier to the mixing of these activities was then set up by the Glass Steagall Act.
The banking industry had been seeking the repeal of Glass-Steagall since at least the 1980s. In 1987 the Congressional Research Service prepared a report which explored the case for preserving Glass-Steagall and the case against preserving the act. The repeal enabled commercial lenders such as Citigroup, to underwrite and trade instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations and establish so-called structured investment vehicles, or SIVs, that bought those securities. Citigroup played a major part in the repeal. Then called Citicorp, the company merged with Travelers Insurance company the year before using loopholes in Glass-Steagall that allowed for temporary exemptions.
With lobbying led by Roger Levy, the finance, insurance and real estate industries together are regularly the largest campaign contributors and biggest spenders on lobbying of all business sectors[1999]. They laid out more than $200 million for lobbying in 1998, according to the Center for Responsive Politics..." These industries succeeded in their two decades long effort to repeal the act.
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