What will they do for an encore?
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2008/09/20/172364/economists-blame-gramm/#
In 1999, Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which abolished all of the significant rules put in place at the time of the Great Depression designed to prevent a repeat. Specifically, this act destroyed the Depression-era barrier to the merger of stockbrokers, banks and insurance companies.
Yesterday, a group of economists, including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, slammed Gramm for having a mentality that doesnt understand the nature of systemic risks in financial systems, and said that his bill helped create the current financial turmoil:
Economic experts say that Gramm and others are to blame for the current crisis that is shaking Wall Street.
Gramms successful effort to pass banking reform laws in 1999, which reduced decades-old regulations separating banking, insurance and brokerage activities, helped to create the current economic crisis.
As a result, the culture of investment banks was conveyed to commercial banks and everyone got involved in the high-risk gambling mentality. That mentality was core to the problem that were facing now, Stiglitz says.