Sanford I. Weill hinted for a return to a regulatory regime similar to the one under the now defunct Glass-Steagall Act, the financial regulation that for decades separated commercial banking from investment banking, the New York Times DealBook blog reported yesterday. "What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking,” said Weill, the former Citigroup chief executive. "Have banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something that’s not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that's not going to be too big to fail." Weill helped progressively turned a Baltimore-based lender into the towering financial services provider named Travelers and who erased Glass-Steagall with the $70 billion union of his firm with Citicorp in 1998. While Glass-Steagall had already been worn away in large parts by then, thanks to various loopholes that firms like Citicorp and the Chase Manhattan Bank had exploited over the years, it was Weill's deal and furious lobbying that finally broke the rule apart.
