The bankers and other elites who were behind the global financial crisis are still out there making a whole lot of money — so the system has not really changed much. The message has been: hey, screw millions of people, no problem, go right ahead and keep your jobs. But, a smidgen more of this might help.

One of the forgotten — or purposely ignored — facts is that Bill Clinton (and his sidekick at the Treasury Department, my Citibank himself, Robert Rubin) helped set the conditions for the financial collapse by engineering the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act — essentially a law that set up a barrier between commercial lending and investment banking decisions. It was a wet-kiss for Wall Street — to which Rubin was the central link for Clinton and his insatiable need to raise money and sell legislation to the highest bidder.

Greed always finds ways to get around laws. But, at least this would set up a little more protection (behind the Wall Street Journal paywall):

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers moved Thursday to rebuild the wall between commercial and investment banking activities.

The law would implement what the group is calling “the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act,” in reference to the 1933 law that separated commercial and investment banking activities. The law was repealed in 1999, and some critics have blamed the subsequent commingling of commercial and investment banking activities for helping to fuel the 2008 financial crisis.

The bill written by a group that includes Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) highlights a lingering fear on Capitol Hill that, five years since the financial crisis, banks remain “too big to fail.” Ms. Warren, speaking Thursday at a hearing on financial regulation, said policy makers need to take steps to “keep the gamblers out of our banks.” [emphasis added]

That highlighted phrase could be a bumper sticker.

Wanna bet how much lobbying money pours in to stop this bill from becoming law?