memories of you

...

Sidney Lumet,

Making Movies;

Janis Joplin,

Joplin In Concert

--------

Dawning realization over past few months -- the Glass Steagall Act was something they ("THEY") passed in the 1930s in response to the Depression -- to make banks more secure, and stable. The Glass Steagall Act was in effect all those years, from early 1930s until sometime in recent years when Congress got rid of it -- repealed it -- and lo and behold, what do we have in banking sector and Economy --?? Catastrophic Instability. (Hello?!)

---------------- It sounds to me like one of those situations where it "wasn't broke" and they tried to "fix" it. ...

I had only peripheral awareness of the Glass Steagall Act -- recently when someone commented on a story in NY Times, they mentioned the G.S. Act, and it looked somehow familiar, but only vaguely.

(You know how it feels when you hear of something and you know you've heard of it, but only rarely and long ago, & you know that you never think about it?

Like

Halston, or

lowest common denominator, or

arteries. ...)

(I like to trace knowledge and impressions -- where do they come from? How do I know this? How do you know that?) --

Glass Steagall Act:

Note 1. Think I have an overall (and simplistic) concept of the Great Depression of the 1930s because my mother and father remembered it from their childhoods. (My parents were a little older than the average age of my friends' parents, and consequently I had a feeling of knowing different things from what other people my age knew -- partly because my mom & dad were a little older and so had memories of an earlier decade, & also because they would talk about it.

When you're a little kid, if there's any influential adult in your life who has a sense of story and will Talk -- past you, rather than "down to" you -- it's a gift, and it's something no one can ever take away from you.)

From television, books, and family, my Idea of "the Depression" was --

everyone was poor,

it was terrible,

there was widespread unemployment and even hunger

in America,

things were in black-and-white (?!), and

after it was over the government made some laws and rules and fixed things up so that it could

never happen again.

I remember wondering what the "stock market crash" was -- pictured a rack of clothing on wheels rolling fast, and crashing into something ...

and I asked and my mother explained it in some kind of way that I could understand.

The main thing, to me, was -- that

IT COULD NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.

That was what I wanted -- assurance, or reassurance.

Everything is OK, now.

Bad things, like Hitler and the Depression, happened in the

Past,

but they don't happen Anymore.

This is the Modern World.

(This is the key to being a natural optimist: total ignorance -- right?!)

--------------------

So now I think the law they passed so that it could

NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN

was surely the Glass Steagall Act.

Later when we had to learn it in school --

high school, probably,

college, probably, -- maybe even junior high --

memorizing, to answer test questions correctly --

it made a lasting impression on me because I had the feeling that this was the thing that created the letters "FDIC" and made Banks and the Economy Stable, and Sound. So that people could Work Hard and Make Money and Make Progress and Succeed In Life.

It was the idea of -- in America we have capitalism (way better than communism!) and we have a free market, but the government has to help, too, because if you don't have laws & FDICs and such, some people will get carried away, and then you have a Stock Market Crash, and stockbrokers jumping out windows. And you don't want that.

------------ So then, jumping ahead in time, from 4th grade forward to Grown-Up Life; when I was working as a lobbyist, in the 90s, in our state capital a guy talked to me about Congress changing something in the law which would allow financial institutions which are not banks to offer some of the same services banks offer. He said it was a bad deal, because these Other Financial Institutions would not have to abide by the same rules and restrictions, and meet the same requirements, as Banks do.

In lobbying, that's called the problem of the "level playing field."

Often the thing someone's lobbying for is something which will skew the "playing field" in their favor so they can make more money.

(That's why it's easier to kill a bill than to pass one. And -- you WANT it to be that way.

---------Some people complain about Congress and their state legislatures and say, "They don't get anything done." Sometimes it's better that they "don't get anything done." All the stuff that gets proposed -- you don't want it "all" to "get done," believe me!)

The guy who told me that, about the new federal regulation -- or deregulation -- I wish I could remember him -- think he was one of the lobbyists for bankers in our state, or maybe their association head, or both. (He was only talking to me because I was there -- not because I could do anything about his issue.) I didn't have a thorough understanding of what he was talking about at the time, partly because you get so busy worrying about the things you're paid to worry about -- but now, looking back on that elusive, cloudy memory -- I-bet-5-dollars-I-don't-have-right-now, that what he was worrying-about / referring-to, was the Glass Steagall Act.

Checking facts, discover: Congress repealed GSA in 1999, & that would coincide with time-period in which that Lobby Conversation would have occurred.

That brief conversation from 12 or 13 years in the past, together with my then very superficial picture of what it meant, has been coming into focus recently -- like turning a dial and getting the Picture Clear.

-30-