TJ 155: The Glass Steagall Act

Join Matt and Tim for their discussion of the Glass Steagall Act and its effect on the consumer. The Glass Steagall Act was a law from 1933 that banned commercial banks (those that you do checking and have an savings account with) from doing any investment banking (securities trading and the like), and vice versa. The Act was put into place as a consumer protection measure to keep commercial banks more conservative in their business actions after the failure of more than 5,000 banks during the Great Depression. Over the years, opponents of the legislation lobbied against the Act, stating it was to restrictive to business and banks' ability to seek revenue. Starting in the 60's, federal regulators started interpreting various actions by commercial and investment banks to be permissible under Glass Steagall that may not have been allowed earlier in the legislation's life cycle such as affiliation between the two and bank underwriting of corporate debt. By the 80's the Act was all but dead, and was fully repealed in 1999. After its repeal, intermingling of commercial and investment banking saw the creation of instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and other complex bundling schemes. You may recognize that as one of the major factors that lead to the 2008 financial crisis. Even with the damage that was done, no further restrictions have been put in place to prevent such an action from happening again. However, there are increasing calls for a form of Glass Steagall to be re-implemented. Whether it will or not remains to be seen, and would likely have to wait until late 2017 at the earliest.