News / Brèves
Back to previous selection / Retour à la sélection précédente

’Come on People!’ Glass-Steagall Worked!

Printable version / Version imprimable

Monday morning’s Forbes features yet another call for Glass-Steagall, this one by "contributor" Sy Harding. "Bringing Back Glass-Steagall Would Rebuild Shattered Confidence In Wall Street" reviews G-S history from 1930s, as a response to excess greed by banksters. Fast-forward to 2008, the cause of the collapse is the same, the calls for Glass-Steagall are from the same impulse, but banks beat this impulse down, leaving us with Dodd Frank, and are delaying even that. JPMorgan was the wake-up call, says Harding, but "Congress and regulators have been oddly quiet in reaction, since the news potentially throws a monkey wrench into their plans to scuttle even the Dodd-Frank financial regulations after the elections."

Taking this head on, Harding says, "Come on people! Wall Street has been ranting for three years about the excess regulations that were being proposed. The truth is that even the harshest of the proposals would be far short of the regulations that were in effect, and working very well, right up to the 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall. Give the country a break. It can’t handle another financial meltdown. In 1929, again in 2000, and yet again in 2008, we’ve seen how those meltdowns are inevitable if the financial industry is left to its own devices."

In addition, two editorials from last Friday have been re-posted from very distant places Monday morning. The editorial from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "What was wrong with the Glass Steagall Act?" saying "Here’s a campaign slogan: Bring back Glass-Steagall!..." was posted by the Star Democrat, serving "mid-shore" Maryland, and a Philadelphia News Daily (McClatchy) editorial was posted by the Bellville (SW Illinois) News-Daily.