Politifact Backs Up Bill Clinton On 1999 Glass Steagall Partial Repeal

[DirkGently]

42. This is a critical issue for Hillary Clinton

I realize this is not a "primaries" thread, but the implicit premise in this spate of "Repealing Glass-Steagall was fine totally fine" appears to be an attempt to shield Hillary on her position that she would not reinstate it.

This is, to me, a huge, real issue for her. I voted for Bill Clinton as enthusiastically as everyone else, but to me a real failing of his approach was a belief -- which I'm sure was in good faith -- that helping Wall Street helps everyone, because everyone can invest in the stock market. The convenient corollary to this conceit is that Wall Street will rain money on you for thinking this way.

That was a mistake, and one I'd like to see Hillary recognize and correct. De-regulating the financial industry in hopes of spreading the wealth to everyone turned out to be a high-tech version of "trickle down" economics. Turns out that the rich run Wall Street in order to enrich Wall Street. The money comes, oddly enough, from the rest of us.

This is a big deal, and it encapsulates an important distinction between Clinton and other Democrats. It's not going to go away with this conceit that Bill Clinton's de-regulation binge really didn't hurt anything. It did. And we can't afford more of the same.