Glass-Steagall Act: Full Text

Read the full text of the Glass-Steagall Act, (a.k.a. the Banking Act of 1933, from the archives of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).  This Act protected the U.S. financial system from its passage in 1933 to its repeal under the Bill Clinton administration in 1999. Just nine years after the Act was repealed, the U.S. experienced the worst financial collapse at the hands of Wall Street since the Great Depression. The Federal Reserve has been bailing out the Wall Street megabanks in various ways since December 2007. The restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act, which would mandate a separation of federally-insured banks from the trading casinos on Wall Street, is an essential component of restoring long-term financial stability to the U.S. financial system.