I went to a journalism conference sponsored by Washington University about two weeks ago and listened to a compelling panel talk given by former economics professor Marc Vaughan (who is now director of the division for credit markets at the National Credit Union Administration) on the history of the Great Depression. Afterwords I asked Marc what he thought about the financial services reform bill and he said he thought it was a mostly political document that wasn’t going to prevent the next financial meltdown.
So it was interesting to read that former Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volker is unsatisfied too with the level of the reform in the bill. He told the New York Times that he wished he had spoken out sooner about his fears about the level of deregulation that occurred in the 1990’s and he infers that he thinks that Glass-Steagall (the law that had prevented investment banks and depository banks from merging which was repealed in 1999) should be reinstated. Never the less, he is still supporting the legislation, which is scheduled to be voted on by the Senate today.
