Documentation: McCain-Cantwell Amendment and Feingold's Floor Remarks on Glass-Steagall

May 8, 2010 (LPAC)-- Following is the text of S.Amendment 3884, introduced by Senators Cantwell, McCain, Kaufman, Harkin, Feingold, and Sanders; the amendment is identical to the "Banking Integrity Act of 2009" introduced by Cantwell and McCain in December.

SEC. 171. LIMITATIONS ON BANK AFFILIATIONS.

(a) Limitation on Affiliation.—The Banking Act of 1933 (12 U.S.C. 221a et seq.) is amended by inserting before section 21 the following:

"Sec. 20. Beginning 1 year after the date of enactment of the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010, no member bank may be affiliated, in any manner described in section 2(b), with any corporation, association, business trust, or other similar organization that is engaged principally in the issue, flotation, underwriting, public sale, or distribution at wholesale or retail or through syndicate participation stocks, bonds, debenture, notes, or other securities, except that nothing in this section shall apply to any such organization which shall have been placed in formal liquidation and which shall transact no business, except such as may be incidental to the liquidation of its affairs.".

(b) Limitation on Compensation.—The Banking Act of 1933 (12 U.S.C. 221 et seq.) is amended by inserting after section 31 the following:

"Sec. 32. Beginning 1 year after the date of enactment of the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010, no officer, director, or employee of any corporation or unincorporated association, no partner or employee of any partnership, and no individual, primarily engaged in the issue, flotation, underwriting, public sale, or distribution, at wholesale or retail, or through syndicate participation, of stocks, bonds, or other similar securities, shall serve simultaneously as an officer, director, or employee of any member bank, except in limited classes of cases in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System may allow such service by general regulations when, in the judgment of the Board of Governors, it would not unduly influence the investment policies of such member bank or the advice given to customers by the member bank regarding investments.".

(c) Prohibiting Depository Institutions From Engaging in Insurance-Related Activities.—

(1) IN GENERAL.—Beginning 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, and notwithstanding any other provision of law, in no case may a depository institution engage in the business of insurance or any insurance-related activity.

(2) DEFINITION.—As used in this section, the term "business of insurance" means the writing of insurance or the reinsuring of risks by an insurer, including all acts necessary to such writing or reinsuring and the activities relating to the writing of insurance or the reinsuring of risks conducted by persons who act as, or are, officers, directors, agents, or employees of insurers or who are other persons authorized to act on behalf of such persons.

Following are the remarks of Sen. Russ Feingold, delivered on the Senate floor on May 6, 2010 in support of the Glass-Steagall amendment:

 

Mr. FEINGOLD. Madam President, I am glad the Senate is finally considering the critically important issue of financial regulatory reform. Few things are as important as ensuring we never again suffer the kind of meltdown of the financial markets that shoved our economy into the worst recession since the Great Depression. I think it still remains to be seen if this bill will do that. While it certainly includes some good reforms, more needs to be done, and the track record of Congress in this area is, at best, checkered.

For the last 30 years, Presidents and Congresses have consistently given into Wall Street lobbyists and weakened essential safeguards. As has been the case in so many areas, members of both political parties are to blame. Legislation that paved the way for the creation of massive Wall Street entities and removed essential protections for our economy passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. From the savings and loan crisis in the late 1980s to the more recent financial crisis that triggered the horrible economic down turn from which we are still recovering, those three decades of bipartisan blunders have been devastating to our Nation. The price of those blunders has been paid by homeowners, Main Street businesses, retirees, and millions of families facing an uncertain economic future.

The impact of the recent financial crisis on the Nation's economy has been enormous. Millions have lost their jobs and millions more who are lucky enough to have a job are forced to work fewer hours than they want and need to work. According to a study done by the Pew Trust, the financial crisis caused American households an average of nearly $5,800 in lost income. Of course, families lost a significant amount of their personal savings. As a nation, we lost $7.4 trillion in stock wealth between July 2008 and March 2009 and another $3.4 trillion in real estate wealth during that same time. We simply cannot afford to continue down the path policymakers have set over the past 30 years.

The test for this legislation then is a simple one: Whether it will prevent another financial crisis. Central to that test will be how this bill will address too big to fail. This is a critical issue that has been growing for some time now as increased economic concentration in the financial services sector has put more and more financial assets under the control of fewer and fewer decisionmakers.

Years ago, a former Senator from Wisconsin, William Proxmire, noted that as banking assets become more concentrated, the banking system itself becomes less stable, as there is greater potential for systemwide failures. Sadly, Senator Proxmire was absolutely right, as recent events have proved. Even beyond the issue of systemic stability, the trend toward further concentration of economic power and economic decisionmaking, especially in the financial sector, simply is not healthy for the Nation's economy.

Banks have a very special role in our free market system: They are rationers of capital. When fewer and fewer banks are making more and more of the critical decisions about where capital is allocated, then there is an increased risk that many worthy enterprises will not receive the capital needed to grow and flourish. For years, a strength of the American banking system was the strong community and local nature of that system. Locally made decisions made by locally owned financial institutions—institutions whose economic prospects are tied to the financial health of the community they serve—have long played a critical role in the economic development of our Nation and especially for our smaller communities and rural areas.

But we have moved away from that system. Directly as a result of policy changes made by Congress and regulators, banking assets are controlled by fewer and fewer institutions, and the diminishment of that locally owned and controlled capital has not benefited either businesses or consumers. Of course, most dramatically, taxpayers across the country must now realize that Senator Proxmire's warning about the concentration of banking assets proved to be all too prescient when President Bush and Congress decided to bail out those mammoth financial institutions rather than allowing them to fail. That was a bailout I strongly opposed.

The trend toward increased concentration of capital was greatly accelerated in 1994 by the enactment of the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Act and especially in 1999 by the enactment of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which tore down the protective firewalls between commercial banking and Wall Street investment firms.

Those firewalls had been established in the wake of the country's last great financial crisis 80 years ago by the Banking Act of 1933, the famous reform measure also known as the Glass -Steagall Act.

Prior to Glass -Steagall , devastating financial panics had been a regular feature of our economy, but that changed with the enactment of that momentous legislation, which stabilized our banking system by implementing two key reforms. First, it established an insurance system for deposits, reassuring bank customers that their deposits were safe and, thus, forestalling bank runs. Second, it erected a firewall between securities underwriting and commercial banking so financial firms had to choose which business to be in. That firewall was a crucial part of establishing another protection—deposit insurance—because it prevented banks that accepted FDIC-insured deposits from making these speculative bets with that money.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act tore down that firewall, as well as the firewall that separated insurance from Wall Street banks, and we have seen the disastrous results of that policy. I voted against tearing down the firewall that separated Main Street from the Wall Street banks. I did it for the same reason I voted against the Wall Street bailout: because I listened to the people of Wisconsin who did not want to give Wall Street more and more power. Wall Street was gambling with the money of hard-working families and too many Members of Congress voted to let them do it. I didn't support it before and I will not support it now. We [Page: S3307] have to get this legislation right and protect the people of Wisconsin and every State—protect them from something such as this ever happening again.

So I was pleased to join the Senator from Washington, Ms. Cantwell, and the Senator from Arizona, Mr. McCain, in introducing legislation to correct that enormous mistake Congress made in passing Gramm-Leach-Bliley. I look forward to supporting an amendment to this measure based on the Cantwell-McCain-Feingold bill.

The measure before us seeks to make up for the lack of a protective firewall between the speculative investment bets made by Wall Street firms and the safety net-backed activities of commercial banking by imposing greater regulatory oversight. We have seen how creative financial firms can be at eluding regulation when so much profit is at stake. No amount of regulatory oversight can take the place of the legal firewall established by Glass -Steagall . So when it is offered, I urge my colleagues to support Senator Cantwell's amendment to restore that sensible protection. Rebuilding the Glass -Steagall firewall is essential in preventing another financial crisis.

But even if we restore Glass -Steagall, there are additional steps we should take to address too big to fail in this bill. I am pleased to be joining the Senator from North Dakota in offering his amendment to address the problem directly by requiring that no financial entity be permitted to become so large that its failure threatens the financial stability of the United States. I am also looking forward to supporting an amendment that will be offered by the Senator from Ohio, Mr. Brown, and the Senator from Delaware, Mr. Kaufman, who is in the Chamber, that proposes bright line limits on the size of financial institutions. The disposition of those three proposals I have just reviewed will go a long way in determining my vote for the final version of this measure. I very much want to craft in this body a bill that can prevent the kind of crisis we experienced in the past, but the bill before us needs some work before we can legitimately make that claim.

I thank the President and I yield the floor.