This is an interesting video clip that quickly educates you about Glass-Steagall while also explaining why such a logical, simple concept which may not be being considered because of Jamie Dimon's relationship with Barack Obama.
My interpretation of the video is that once Glass-Steagall was rescinded, banks were allowed to co-mingle their mom and pop local economy money with the richer investors venture capital. If the venture capital project was successful, it meant that wall street had found another country to outsource jobs to and main street lost jobs!
If the venture capital was not successful, it just meant the banks were hugely in debt to their very rich customers. Either way, main street was basically hurt.
What possibly propped up our economy for the first several years after Glass-Steagall was rescinded was some of the new found wealth made it back to the United States in the form of newly wealthy foreigners coming to the United States to buy homes.
So, main street did benefit if they had owned their home already and saw the value of their home continue to rise. However, these homeowners were then lured to get equity lines of credit. Even that would have been ok if people were reinvesting in their local communities.
Unfortunately, when all the product going into the homes is from other countries, and some of the labor being used is not on the books, it becomes a recipe for disaster.
