It is too bad that a large majority of people living now can not share memories with parents or grandparents who went through or were the direct product of those who suffered during the 1929 stock market crash. Overnight, values changed and you can still run into an elderly person today--you know the one I mean--the little old lady who steals the packet of sugar from the table, hoarding it at home just in case.
The values instilled in me were a direct result of what happened way back then--pay cash for everything when you can--but there has been 79 years from then until now and once again, greed got the best of us. Everyone wants instant gratification and all the material things that they think will make their lives happier. Whose fault is this?
In 1933 the founder of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Senator Carter Glass, was the primary force behind a bill entitled Glass-Steagall Act. This was a strong bill brought about because of the Wall Street crash of 1929. He and the government ultimately did not want to see anything like that happening again. A system was set up dividing commercial and investment banks with the purpose of curbing the use of their deposits should there be underwriting that had failed. In 1956 the government enacted the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, another bill to reduce risk in the financial industry.
The U.S. Congress in 1999 repealed the GSA that eliminated the restrictions between commercial and investment banks with the President saying that he wanted the free market and the banks to regulate themselves. My Republican friends say the Democrats are at fault for the crisis we are now in. I say we ALL are at fault.
Times haven’t changed that much. What happened then are the same things happening now: banks have been too speculative; banks and financial institutions are greedy and made high risk and unsound loans. Citizens bought what they could not afford. It was all about “me.” We can’t control our greed or regulate ourselves. Whose fault is this? We all now must suffer the consequences. Are you crossing your fingers?
