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Politics : BuSab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (11173)	12/24/2011 3:06:56 PM
From: SmoothSail	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23934

I remember Bill P describing a meeting with Sandy Weill, Jamie Dimon and Clinton where they put together a deal to merge Travelers Insurance and Citicorp. He told me that was the beginning of the financial crisis, even though Weill denies that it played a role. That merger wouldn't have been possible without the repeal of the Glass-Steagall. From Wiki: In April 1998 Travelers Group announced an agreement to undertake the $76 billion merger between Travelers and Citicorp, and the merger was completed on October 8, 1998. The possibility remained that the merger would run into problems connected with federal law. Ever since the Glass–Steagall Act, banking and insurance businesses had been kept separate. Weill and John S. Reed bet that Congress would soon pass legislation overturning those regulations, which Weill, Reed and a number of businesspeople considered not in their interest. To speed up the process, they recruited ex-President Gerald Ford (Republican) to the Board of Directors and Robert Rubin (Secretary of Treasury during Democratic Clinton Administration) whom Weill was close to. With both Democrats and Republican on their side, the law was taken down in less than 2 years. Many European countries, for instance, had already torn down the firewall between banking and insurance. During a two-to-five-year grace period allowed by law, Citigroup could conduct business in its merged form; should that period have elapsed without a change in the law, Citigroup would have had to spin off its insurance businesses. Weill's office holds a wood etching of him engraved with the words "The Shatterer of Glass–Steagall". Weill denies that the repeal of Glass–Steagall played a role in the recent financial crisis. [3]