Comment by sehansen

The 2008 housing crisis would have played out exactly the same if Glass-Steagall had still been in effect. The big banks that failed--Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch--were all pure investment banks. The same applied to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, back then. And most of the small banks that failed were pure commercial banks.

The whole mortgage-backed security and collateralized debt obligation show would also have been legal under Glass-Steagall and had been common practice for years by the time of the repeal. The same with NINJA and 0% down-payment loans.