Glass-Steagall signed
Impact
Banking firewall stood for 66 years
What happened
Separated commercial deposit-taking banks from investment banks. Passed in the aftermath of over 4,000 US bank failures between 1929 and 1933. The structural firewall it imposed lasted 66 years until its repeal in 1999.
Context
Glass-Steagall is often remembered as a single law, but it was four provisions inside the 1933 Banking Act. Its repeal by Gramm-Leach-Bliley in 1999 is widely identified as a structural precondition for the 2008 crisis.
Era
03 · The SEC
The 1929 crash revealed that US public companies were under essentially no obligation to tell the truth. It took five years, a 90% decline in the Dow, and a new administration for Congress to create the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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Securities Exchange Act Signed