There Are Real Reasons to Bring Back Glass-Steagall

When both major parties endorsed restoring the Glass-Steagall Act in their campaign platforms last month, they reaffirmed the powerful hold that the Glass-Steagall principle of separating commercial and investment banking has on the public imagination.

Glass-Steagall has become politically popular for good reason. The public understands that reducing the size and (especially) the complexity of our major publicly supported banking institutions is crucial to a healthier financial system. Restoring some version of the Glass-Stegall firewall between commercial and investment banking is a direct and powerful means to that end. There’s also an understanding that the financial system was generally more stable during the 60 years in which Glass-Steagall was in force.

Unfortunately, much of the inside-the-beltway commentary on Glass-Steagall does not add depth and substance to the public debate and is often inappropriately dismissive and shallow. A number of respected experts on the banking system, such as Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig, are strong supporters of Glass-Steagall. But too many other commenters dismiss Glass-Steagall for reasons that are at best half-truths and at worst censor the robust debate that we need to have about our current system of universal banking.

Read on.

Why the Government is Getting Fed Up with Wall Street All Over Again

The next president could face another financial crisis unless the big banks get their act together. So far, they haven’t.

Democrats and Republicans agreed on almost nothing at their conventions except this: Both party platforms signaled support for resurrecting a version of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall law, a move designed to show they are willing to break up the big banks. In fact, such a law is unlikely to be enacted by either a President Hillary Clinton or a President Donald Trump. But major Wall Street firms still have reason to be concerned that the feds are getting fed up with them. And in the end the banks could get broken up anyway, even if the next president does nothing about it and there is no new Glass-Steagall act.

The new mistrust of the Street by regulators in Washington comes down to one main issue: The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are growing impatient with the banks’ failure to explain why they should remain so big. Eight long years after the financial collapse that almost took down the global economy, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Bank of New York Mellon and State Street have failed to provide satisfactory “living wills,” or credible plans for how they would keep serving clients and markets if they ever needed to be reorganized in bankruptcy. Regulators handed down failing grades to the banks in April.

 

That’s the second time in two years that major banks have fallen short of regulators’ expectations in one of these tests. The banks must decide how much they are willing to sacrifice by an Oct. 1 deadline, when FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg says he wants to see “concrete changes.”

If they fail again, the government would have the authority to ratchet up regulation of the firms—which could make investors impatient, forcing the banks to divest more assets and make themselves smaller. And if that doesn’t work, the banks could simply be broken up. Regulators, in other words, don’t necessarily need another Glass-Steagall; they have the authority to do it now.

The bottom line is that regulators are not optimistic about how the U.S. economy would fare, even now, if one of these giant firms went through bankruptcy. And that is an option that the government and the banks will be expected to entertain under laws enacted after the unpopular 2008 bailouts. To satisfy the government, the banks must simplify their still mind-bogglingly complex businesses and do a better job of showing that they can tap liquid assets that can be turned into cash during a crisis.

“It requires the will to do so,” the FDIC’s Gruenberg told Politico. “These are not necessarily easy things to do. They require hard decisions by the firms.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/2016-elections-dnc-rnc-glass-steagall-wall-street-214131#ixzz4GIhZmCnj

No, a New Glass-Steagall Is Not Good News For Citigroup, JPMorgan, Bank of America

For a while now KBW’s Frederick Cannon and Allyson Boyd have been urging big banks likeCitigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) to break up. A new Glass-Steagall, something backed by both Democrats and Republicans, would not be the ideal way to accomplish that, however. They explain why:

We along with others in the marketplace have shown that there is potential shareholder value creation from the breakup of some of the largest financial institutions, including Citigroup. Investors should not view the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall as a potential way to unleash value in large banks, however. A Congressional approach to breaking up the banks would not be based on economic value creation, but be based on the politics of applying penalties to the largest banks. Therefore it is difficult to develop a positive view on potential regulations for the shares of the largest banks, specifically JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup…

Read on.

How Glass-Steagall Crashed the 2016 Conventions

And pay close attention if this is mention on the campaign trail with Clinton-Kaine and Trump-Pence… Stay tuned…

The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 was an unexpected and prominent part of the Democratic and Republican conventions this year, as both parties added a call to reinstate the law as part of their party platforms. But that will be easier said than done, considering that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have shown little interest in the idea. Following is a look at how a Depression-era law found its way to Cleveland and Philadelphia. READ MORE »

GOP platform of reinstating Glass-Steagall: Any problems of bank can be resolved through the bankruptcy code

Slate:

On Monday morning, Republican convention organizers handed out draft text of the platform, and the section on banking includes nothing on bringing back Glass-Steagall. Instead, it spends a lot of time calling on Congress to curtail the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s powers, then says:

Republicans believe that no financial institution is too big to fail. We support legislation to ensure that the problems of any financial institution can be resolved through the bankruptcy code. [Note: Dodd-Frank has this. It’s called the living will provision.] We endorse prudent regulation father banking system to ensure that FDIC-regulated banks are properly capitalized [Note: Dodd-Frank also has this] and taxpayers are protected on bailouts. We will end the government’s use of disparite impact theory in enforcing anti-discrimination laws with regard to lending.

And of course, the RNC blasted the final draft of the platform. Obviously, Paul Manafort, Trump’s top head minion, did think this through. Manafort stated that the Glass-Steagall bill needs to be brought back because Dodd-Frank has been a burden on small banks.

Trump campaign still weighing Glass-Steagall

While the Republican Party has made the return of Glass-Seagall part of its official platform, Donald Trump‘s national finance chairman, Steven Mnuchin, told CNBC on Wednesday the campaign hasn’t decided yet if it will support the plan.

The Depression-era legislation, which was designed to prevent big bank “supermarkets,” would essentially break up many of the large institutions. News of the GOP’s call to reinstate the law, which was repealed in 1999, has made many on Wall Street unhappy.

“We’re not taking a position on whether we support that or don’t support it. We’re saying a lot of things need to be looked at. We think Dodd-Frank needs to be looked at. Obviously there is an important concern of protecting depositors,” Mnuchin said in an interview with “Power Lunch.”

Read on.

Glass-Steagall: Wall Street is not happy with Donald Trump

I bet they are pissed.. lol!

CNBC:

After the surprise announcement, which came on the first day of the Republican National Convention, Wall Street sources sounded off on the idea that a Republican would reverse course on policies nearly 20 years old and now taken for granted by big banks.

One lawyer, who works with financial institutions on behalf of a white-shoe firm in New York, called the idea “scary.” Even Wilbur Ross, one of the Trump campaign’s biggest supporters from the finance industry, called it “surprising.” Others on Wall Street who spoke to CNBC used stronger language that can’t be printed.

The Republican Platform’s Surprise Revival of Glass-Steagall Legislation

David Dayen

THE LAST-MINUTE DECISION to include in the Republican platform a call to restore the firewall between commercial and investment banking comes as a surprise, because Donald Trump himself has never publicly addressed or endorsed such a reform in his year-long presidential run.

Trump did once say at a debate in New Hampshire, “nobody knows banking better than I do,” but a review of the transcripts of all 12 Republican debates shows that he never endorsed restoring Glass-Steagall, legislation first passed in 1933. Websites devoted to detailing Trump’s positions find no record of him having any opinion on the Depression-era law. The issues pages of Trump’s presidential website steer clear of anything related to banks or finance.

In fact, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who first leaked word that the platform would endorse the reintroduction of Glass-Steagall, ran a campaign consulting firm in the 1980s that helped elect to Congress Phil Gramm, co-author of Glass-Steagall’s repeal. (Gramm supported Ted Cruz in the GOP primaries.)

The measure is haphazardly attached to the end of a paragraph decrying regulatory overreach by the Environmental Protection Agency, National Labor Relations Board, Federal Communications Commission, and more. Tacking on a call to restore a law that prevents private corporations from particular lines of business suggests that there wasn’t much thought put into it before Monday.

To the extent that Trump has expressed anything about financial reform, it’s been a desire to roll it back. He told The Hill last October that the Dodd-Frank law is “terrible” and “the regulators are running the banks.” Dodd-Frank’s repeal is also in the Republican platform.

Read on.

GOP platform pushes for big-bank breakup, return of Glass-Steagall

lol! I wonder what Sen. Warren and Sen. Sanders have to say on this since GOP Congress and Senators have been trying many times to dismantle the Dodd-Frank bill and the bank lobbyists have been lobbying against the Glass-Steagall. And now their platform pushed to break up the banks??? Don’t buy the beans, folks! The GOP party are going after votes, not the banks!

The Republican Party is going after the big banks.

As the GOP convention gets under way in Cleveland, a top adviser to presumptive nominee Donald Trump said the party wants to revive the Glass-Steagall Act, Depression-era legislation that helped prevent big bank “supermarkets” but which was repealed in 1999.

Critics of the banking industry believe the repeal created too-big-to-fail institutions that required a massive government bailout when the financial crisis exploded in 2008. The repeal often is cited as a cause of the crisis, even though two of the investment banks at the core of the crisis, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, were unaffected by the act’s prohibition of combining investment and commercial banks.

“We believe the Obama-Clinton years have passed legislation that has been favorable to the big banks, which is why you see all the Wall Street money going to her,” Trump campaign manger Paul Manafort told reporters, according to an account in The Hill. “We are supporting the small banks and Main Street.”

Read on.

The Glass-Steagall Act: A Legal and Policy Analysis

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