Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Sandy Weill Changes His Mind

This is like one day discovering the sun rising in the west:


Merging an investment bank with a commercial bank required a repeal of Glass-Steagall, the New Deal law that had broken up commercial and investment banks in the first place. So Weill went to work, and a year later Glass-Steagall was gone. Sandy Weill was, in a very real sense, the midwife of repeal, or, as he preferred to call himself at the time, "The Shatterer of Glass-Steagall."

For years Weill has denied that repeal played any role in the 2008 financial crisis. Today, it appears that he's changed his mind:
Weill did a 180 on CNBC's Squawk Box this morning, saying that he now believes big banks — like, presumably, Citigroup — should be broken up:
What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something that’s not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that’s not too big to fail.

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