The origins of Glass-Steagall

RtO has all along said that the Glass-Steagall Act was responsible for the 60 years America went without a financial panic. Before its passage and since its repeal in 1999, the rate has been one panic every 7 years, with the longest period without one 13 years, a special reprieve created by the unique financial operations of the Great War. This history is summed in RtO's slogan: Unsupervised markets fail. Here is a capsule prehistory of Glass-Steagall, published by Vanity Fair in 2010 but only coming to my attention today thanks to a link at Little Green Footballs. George Santayana comes to mind: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Santayana was a Pollyanna. The men who dismantled Glass-Steagall remembered it very well; they just disbelieved the past had happened.