Phil Gramm On Financial Re-regulation
It seems likely we will see more financial re-regulation.
Phil Gramm points out that the deregulation that everyone criticizes was precisely what allowed Bear Stearns (more of an investment bank) to be bought out by J.P. Morgan (more of a commercial bank).
His accusers charge that he nearly single-handedly torpedoed the housing and financial market when he wrote the laws that took down the Depression-era barriers between investment and commercial banks. Was it a bad idea in retrospect?
... J.P. Morgan could not have bought Bear Stearns and prevented a meltdown without Gramm-Leach-Bliley." [emphasis added]
Couldn't have happened at all if someone hadn't noticed, and made a convincing argument, that the financial regulations we lived in for half the 20th century were standing in the way. We had a partial government bailout because Gramm had the foresight to see that without that we'd get a full government bailout.
