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In reply to the discussion: Bernie Sanders: The solution: The major Wall Street banks must be broken up.... [View all]jmowreader
(53,213 posts)The time to mandate systemic changes was when the banks were on the ropes.
Let's be blunt: Bernie Sanders' "make a list of the too-big-to-fail banks and break them up" idea sucks so hard it'll lift a bowling ball twenty feet. There is no way in Hell the real serious malefactors will ever be broken up, and if they did there's nothing to prevent the broken-up parts from working under the table to sabotage the breakup.
What NEEDS to happen is simpler and more effective: When Glass-Steagall was written, three screens were erected in the financial industry. Back then, you had "commercial banks" - savings accounts, checking accounts and loans; "investment banks" - stocks, bonds, commodities futures and other similar products; and "insurers" which sell insurance. The government wanted completely different companies to sell the three product lines, but since a LOT of banks also sold stocks, the government required separation between the bankers and the brokers. Thanks to our "friends" in the Republican Party, I can go to my bank tomorrow morning, approach my Personal Banker, and ask for a new checking account, a car loan, an auto insurance policy for the new car and a hundred shares of the company that made it - and get everything from the same lady. Which is exactly how it was set up before Black Friday of 1929, and it's one of the reasons there was a Black Friday of 1929. My idea is very easy to comprehend: within 364 days from the enactment of the law requiring it, a financial institution needs to decide whether it is a commercial bank (in this law a credit union will be classified as a commercial bank as a credit union serves the same essential function as a commercial bank), a mortgage bank, a securities dealer or an insurance company, and they must completely divest themselves of the other three lines of business. Further, a divested financial firm may not retain the name of the firm it was divested from..."Wells Fargo Home Mortgage" and "Wells Fargo Securities" must create new names for themselves.