Ex-CITIGROUP CEO Blames Glass-Steagall Repeal for Financial Crisis

[Octafish]

"Yeah. See. Move on!"



From the "DU Told You So Department"...

Parsons Blames Glass-Steagall Repeal for Crisis

By Kim Chipman and Christine Harper - Apr 19, 2012 8:48 PM ET
Bloomberg

Richard Parsons, speaking two days after ending his 16-year tenure on the board of Citigroup Inc. (C) and a predecessor, said the financial crisis was partly caused by a regulatory change that permitted the company’s creation.

The 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall law that separated banks from investment banks and insurers made the business more complicated, Parsons said yesterday at a Rockefeller Foundation event in Washington. He served as chairman of Citigroup, the third-biggest U.S. bank by assets, from 2009 until handing off the role to Michael O’Neill at the April 17 annual meeting.

SNIP...

U.S. Bailout

“People have a sort of a notion that ‘well, we can decide that’s too big to manage,’” he said. “But it got that way because there was a market need and institutions find and follow the needs of the marketplace. So what we have to do is we have to learn how to improve our ability to manage it and manage it more effectively.”

Citigroup, which took the most government aid of any U.S. bank during the financial crisis, has lost 86 percent of its value in the past four years, twice as much as the 24-company KBW Bank Index. (BKX) Most shareholders voted this week against the bank’s compensation plan, which awarded Pandit about $15 million in total pay for 2011, when the shares fell 44 percent.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-19/parsons-blames-glass-steagall-repeal-for-crisis.html

Gee. If only Washington knew about this! I bet they'd do something to stop the crooks!