last fall, it was all about the wall: financial bigwigs like former federal reserve chair paul volcker, former citigroup co-CEO john reed, governor of the bank of england, mervyn king, all espoused reestablishing the legal barrier between the derivatives casino that masquerades today as wall street and commercial banks holding insured deposits. it made good sense: the wall goes up in 1933, america becomes the premier financial center for 66 years. the wall comes down in 1999, the financial system collapses exactly 9 years later with the precise characteristics of the massive wall street swindles that occurred in the late 1920s when there was also no wall. but the wall has now gone missing in the current financial reform bill advanced out of the senate banking committee by its chairman, senator christopher dodd. equally noteworthy, the historic 1933 legislation that built the essential wall between flim-flam securities salesmen and aunt tilly’s insured bank account, commonly known as the glass-steagall act, has gone missing itself from the internet. to underscore how extraordinary this is, if you put “glass-steagall act” in the google search box, it brings up 220,000 hits. and, yet, it is next to impossible to find the actual text of the legislation on the internet// pam martens, 03.26.10, counterpunch
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