Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America Highlight

his shrewd undermining of the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that barred insurance companies, investment banks, and commercial banks from merging. In 1998, the law was put to the test when then–Citibank chairman Sandy Weill orchestrated the merger of his bank with Travelers Insurance and the investment banking giant Salomon Smith Barney. The merger was frankly and openly illegal, precisely the sort of thing that Glass-Steagall had been designed to prevent—