Kel and I were talking tonight, when I remembered a New York Times article from 1999 I had seen linked to recently:
CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS
The article is about the passing of Gramm-Leach-Bliley. The legislation passed in the Senate 90-8, and in the House 362-57. Generally speaking GLB deregulated the way banks, securities, and insurers could interact. Some choice quotes from the article:
"I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010," said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. "I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.
Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, said that Congress had "seemed determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes."
"Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis," Mr. Wellstone said. "Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place."
I'm very happy to see Feingold on the list that voted against.