As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee from 1995 through 2000, Gramm was Washington's most prominent and outspoken champion of financial deregulation. He played a leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the 1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banks from Wall Street. He also inserted a key provision into the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that exempted over-the-counter derivatives like credit-default swaps from regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
What a nice guy. /s
I do not believe the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act had anything to do with anything. I thought it was dumb Depression era law to begin with.
What triggered the subprime mortgage meltdown was the creation of government run organizations such as Fannie and Freddie coupled with the passage of truly insane legislation such as the Community Reinvestment Act which active encouraged financial institutions to make mortgages available to low income people without the usual requirements of checking employment history, credit worthiness, as well as putting down a significant down payment and having collateral.