Glass-Steagall Act

  • Carter Glass (R-VA)
  • Henry B. Steagall (D-AL)
  • 2016 0119 (Updated) - CRS - The Glass-Steagall Act: Legal and Policy Analysis - 28p
  • (p10-11) - By the time you got to the point where Glass-Steagall was rescinded, there were no restrictions -- you probably know all this, but Glass-Steagall started to get reinterpreted in the late '80s, mid- to late '80s, I don't remember exactly, and by the time you got to the rescission of Glass-Steagall which I think was in 2000 -- maybe it was late '99 -- I had left Treasury, but I was an advocate of rescinding it. But there were no restrictions left on what a large bank could do except for insurance underwriting.
  • So this whole question of too big to fail or what a bank should be or shouldn't be, narrow banks versus universal banks and so forth that you have now going forward is not a question that you go back to Glass-Steagall. Glass-Steagall, at least as it existed when it was rescinded, had nothing left in it of firewalls except for one, which was insurance underwriting which had no relevance to anything.

2010 0308 - FCIC - Interview of Robert Rubin178p