I just cited the commondreams article because it was where I read the snippet (linked from Wikipedia) about Travelers and that's what Glass-Steagall would have clearly had an effect on (regardless of whether it mattered in the long run). As I said, the FDIC ruling in 1982 seemed to open the door to commercial banking being able to hold subsidiaries that deal in securities. Perhaps by the time the sections were repealed in 1999, it had little effect, but there were two decades of financial shenanigans leading up to that point.

If the repeals in 1999 had no effect, why did they need to be repealed?

MF Global is just an example of a firm not following rules about trading accounts.

I think the rules in glass-steagall at the least had a chilling effect, which once removed made the banks suddenly see high returns from high risk. The run into CDO's and new derivatives in 2000-2008 timeframe would still have happened, but I highly doubt the list of endangered banks would be quite as high as it is today. I check the list of newly closed banks every Friday at calculatedriskblog.com.

Greenspan's devotion to market efficiencies also made the Fed unwilling or unable to enforce or implement new regulations, or push congress for power to regulate new financial instruments.

I don't do this stuff for a living, so I'm not going to go find all the regulations and ruling over the last 30 years, but I occasionally listen to guests on The Daily Show that seem to know quite a bit about how financial markets work and read here and there, and my conclusion is that de-regulation up to and even beyond Glass-Steagall repeals in 1999 at the very least amplified the recent financial bombs in the US and around the world. I don't think there is a single "Aha!" moment, it has been a growing problem for 30 years. Quite possibly one of the worst items was a regulation...of de-regulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernization...

Your points on GS seem to line up with the original point about GS being jerks to their clients..."They profited on both ends of the deal, but they couldn't care less which side won". That's the point of the guy that quit, right? GS is screwing their clients, they don't care if the client wins or loses as long as GS wins.

Maybe I'll be less enthusiastic about the rules of Glass-Steagall, but my overall opinion that banking fraud is more rampant after de-regulation and that if I came into a sum of millions the last place I'd trust with my investments is GS, is not changed.