U.S. hasn't seen financial reform bill since FDR's New Deal

As Obama will sign into law next week the Financial Reform Bill that passed yesterday by the Senate, U.S. hasn't had a Financial Reform Bill since Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.

Here is FDR's Inaugural Address onMarch 4, 1933.


FDR said:


 Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.


 Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.

And here was what FDR did for bank and monetary reforms:

He closed all the banks in the country and kept them all closed until he could pass new legislation.[16] On March 9, Roosevelt sent to Congress the Emergency Banking Act, drafted in large part by Hoover's top advisors. The act was passed and signed into law the same day. It provided for a system of reopening sound banks under Treasury supervision, with federal loans available if needed. Three-quarters of the banks in the Federal Reserve System reopened within the next three days. Billions of dollars in hoarded currency and gold flowed back into them within a month, thus stabilizing the banking system. By the end of 1933, 4,004 small local banks were permanently closed and merged into larger banks. (Their depositors eventually received on average 86 cents on the dollar of their deposits; it is a common false myth that they received nothing back.) In June 1933, over Roosevelt's objections, Congress created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which insured deposits for up to $2,500 beginning January 1, 1934; this amount was increased to $5,000 on July 1, 1934.