When Glass-Steagall, the long-standing government legislation that maintained the separation from banks and freely investing financial institutions, was lifted in the waning year of the Clinton administration, it opened a decade of uncontrolled, high-leveraged investments. It was primarily responsible for the high-risk leveraged breakdown that led to the worldwide financial collapse in mid-September 2008.

In effect, it allowed commercial banks to “invade” the high-risk investment markets with customers’ holdings, while putting such broad financial institutions as Goldman-Sachs into the banking business. In effect, it opened the doors of wheeling and dealing so wide as to cause an over-leveraged crash that came close to creating a global depression. It further exposed most commercial banks and many financial brokerage firms to an increasing financial disaster, now known as the Great Recession of 2008-2011.