Glass-Siegel act and Buffet

[Horsefish]

If congress re-instates Glass Siegel, the banks will have to divest their insurance and investment businesses. The investment houses will have to divest their bank divisions. What a freaking mess! Buffet would no doubt be a buyer of one or more of the stronger insurance divisions. Kind of makes sense now why he invested in banks when he did.

That scenario would leave the banks with toxic assets and without the profitable insurance or investment business. If that comes up in congress, buy SKF.

Thoughts?

[cramerica1972]

they need to be broken up,if they are 2 big 2 fail they are 2 big 2 exist,plain and simple.

[aiki14]

If congress re-instates Glass Siegel, the banks will have to divest their insurance and investment businesses. The investment houses will have to divest their bank divisions. What a freaking mess! Buffet would no doubt be a buyer of one or more of the stronger insurance divisions. Kind of makes sense now why he invested in banks when he did.

That scenario would leave the banks with toxic assets and without the profitable insurance or investment business. If that comes up in congress, buy SKF.

Thoughts?

First thing that comes to mind is it's been done before and it was workable. Of course it wasn't done in this interest rate environment, and that would pose an interesting set of problems. JPM and MS were once the same firm.

[Horace Kent]

glass stegall is nothing more than a talking point for left-wing hacks. it has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with this crisis.

yes, i read the rolling stone piece over the weekend

what the author notably neglected to include was the structure of the 5 big canadian banks - their structure is identical to ours - there is no wall between commercial and investment banking - they are merely held to a higher reserve requirement.

regardless - the shit was rated AAA - commercial banks would've bought it anyway, and kept some of this shit on their books, same for investment banks.

securitization was alive and well before glass stegall was repealed.


and without glass stegall - goldman, and morgan stanely would've been vaporized by now. it was only after they converted to bank holding company that their respective downward spiral was averted.

this is nothing more than politiks

[mo_dingo]

My favorite part is when I hear talk radio saying in 1999 when they passed the gramm-bliley act that allowed these types of mergers, it was under a CLINTON administration!!! It's the dems fault!!!!!!

Except for the fact that the bill passed with super-majority in both the senate/house, which means Clinton couldn't have successfully vetoed the bill, even if he wanted to, which he obviously didn't. Blame all of congress, left and right.

This is the talk of bear markets. If you look at the headlines of the newspapers after every stock market crash, the same type of talk is heard everywhere. And all the while the market begins to recover, it's still the worst market ever, since the oct 87 crash, 29 crash, etc.

All will be well in time. It's a great time to find the bull stocks b/c everyone is still so damn afraid.