Who's Protecting Your Savings?

       Glass-Stiegel vs. Dodd-Frank. What's the big deal? The big deal is that we wouldn't have needed the one if we'd left the other alone. At or near the end of the Great Depression, the Glass-Stiegel laws were put in place to protect our economy from big banks who weren't interested in anything but bigger and bigger returns on the buck.
       But over the next six decades the banking industry and Wall Street convinced Congress that they had learned the hard lessons and were fully capable of controlling their businesses without big brother looking over their shoulders. So the farmer unlocked the hen house and put the fox in charge of  protecting his chickens.
       Then something unexpected happened. The farmer was forced into the feather business. Now five years ago, the Dodd-Frank bill was passed to pick up the pieces of the Glass Stiegel act that Wall Street and the Banking industry convinced our Congress to replace. Not a perfect answer to the problems brought on by the Great Recession but at least a start.
       So here are the questions; How long will they remain in effect before the financial markets convince Congress they're adult enough to look after their own housekeeping and what will the next financial meltdown cost us? You can be fairly certain that when the time comes both the financial markets and Congress will assure us that we're fully protected.
       The final set of questions are; what will the next bill do to protect us and how long will it remain in effect? You're probably familiar with the old adage that making the same mistake over and over won't change the outcome, right? But which outcome? The one where we fix the problem or the one where we allow the fix to be repealed?