General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Bernie Sanders: The solution: The major Wall Street banks must be broken up.... [View all]ozone_man
(4,825 posts)who signed the bill into law and said that about Glass-Steagall. The point is that if Glass-Steagall needed to be modernized, it could have been, but they eliminated it and removed those protections, and derivatives were totally unregulated. The economic implosion of 2008 is directly traceable to that act.
Your proposals seem well thought out, and you probably know a lot more than I about derivatives. But, I think it is necessary to break up the big banks, like they did with Ma Bell. Those five banks control now more than they did in 2008, so we are setting ourselves up for another situation like that. And now Obama has caved in to Republicans about derivatives again. You can say (E.) that there will be no government bailouts, but the reality is different. When the next financial disaster hits, there will be a Hank Paulson or a Tim Geitner, or maybe Lloyd Blankfein (he does God's work afterall), who will rush in and save them all at our expense. Better to break them up, so they are no longer too big to fail, no list of rules A. through E., which will have countless interpretations and loopholes. The simplest answer is usually the correct one.