Columbia economics professor, Nobel Memorial Prize laureate, and one-time World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz argues that the Glass-Steagall repeal—“the culmination of a $300 million lobbying effort by the banking and financial-services industries”—was determinative. “The proponents said, in effect, Trust us: we will … make sure that the problems of the past do not recur.” But the problems did recur.75 Financial regulation—like telecom regulation—needed retooling for the twenty-first century. But instead of updating the relevant regulations Congress and the Clinton administration gutted
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