Btw, these wonderful, hard working bankers? These competent financial wizards we believe have so much talent that their current troubles are just "misfortune that we need to intervene to protect them from?" They are so irresponsible they lobbied for the repeal of the Glass-Seagal (sp?) act. This was the act passed after the Depression which said a bank may not hold its operating reserves in stock. That is critical A bank has to have money on hand to pay depositors who want some of their money back. The banks said "well, money sitting around doesn't earn us anything. We'll buy blue chip stocks, and we can earn a little bit from capital gains and dividends!" The problem with this is that if the stock market suddenly crashes, those stocks become illiquid. You can't sell them. But people are MORE likely to want their money. And when the law requires a bank that doesn't honor a depositor's demand for their own money, that bank must close. The Act was a very reasonable realization that no matter how painful it was for a banker to have idle money around, there had to be a fair bit of it on hand, because emergencies and crises aren't scheduled on the banker's calenders.

It was a total NO BRAINER and they lobbied successfully to repeal this act. and yes, the same thing that happened in the Depression happened again because of it.