This is why we are having banking problems today. This law was put in after the Great Depression. Changed in 1999
Clinton Signs Legislation Overhauling Banking Laws
WASHINGTON, Nov. 12, 1999 (Reuters) - President Clinton signed into law today a sweeping overhaul of Depression-era banking laws. The measure lifts barriers in the industry and allows banks, securities firms and insurance companies to merge and sell each other's products.
"This legislation is truly historic," President Clinton told a packed audience of lawmakers and top financial regulators. "We have done right by the American people."
The bill repeals parts of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and the 1956 Bank Holding Company Act to level the domestic playing field for United States financial companies and allow them to compete better in the evolving global financial marketplace.
Analysts and industry leaders say the measure will probably fuel a wave of mergers as companies compete to build financial supermarkets offering all the services customers need under one roof.
Financial stocks were winners on Wall Street today, with J.P. Morgan & Company, Citigroup, American Express and Merrill Lynch all posting big gains. That helped the Dow Jones industrial average end up 174.02 points, at 10,769.32.
The Senate approved the final bill by 90 to 8 on Nov. 4 and the House followed suit by a vote of 362 to 57. Congress had previously made almost a dozen unsuccessful attempts over the last 25 years to revise the statutes, which had increasingly come to be viewed as anachronisms.
"The world changes, and Congress and the laws have to change with it," said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, chairman of the Banking Committee and one of the bill's prime sponsors.
Opponents said it would have the opposite effect, creating behemoths that will raise fees, violate customers' privacy by sharing and selling their personal data, and put the stability of the financial system at risk.
The privacy issue was a key focus in the long and often heated negotiations that produced a compromise bill, and President Clinton made clear he still wanted to see more done to safeguard consumers' personal financial information.
Clinton's support for the legislation comes despite warnings from critics and consumer activists that it could lead to price-gouging of consumers and the erosion of their privacy by newly formed financial conglomerates that are too big and powerful.
"The bill is anti-consumer and anti-community," advocate Ralph Nader declared. "It will mean higher prices and fewer choices for low-, moderate- and middle-income families across the nation."
