As the year 2,000 approached, politicians from the two party system negotiated at the White House well past midnight and agreed to change community lending rules for banks.  This compromise was to head to a group of House and Senate negotiators, takers of big money campiagn contributions from the financial services industries. That group was considering legislation that would favorably reshape the financial services industry, for the short term, and end the depression protections of 66 year old Glass-Steagall Act. 

The financial overhaul legislation would lift Depression-era legal barriers and allow banks, brokerage firms and insurance companies to merge and sell each other's products, just like the good old days, before the Great Depression.  Democrat and Republican politicians may realize that their days as a two party monompoly are close to over, and that Americans already realize they are all a bunch of lawyer-like individuals willing to do anything to zealously advance the causes of the paying political clients.

After meeting with Treasury Department officials, Republican and Democratic lawmakers, with smiles on their faces, said they had an agreement that the lying, adultere in the White House could accept.

"I am for the first time optimistic that we will pass, after a long time, financial services legislation,'' said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. ``In 19 years, we are the closest we have ever been to actually achieving a bill.''   This news ikely pleased his campiagn contributors in the financial service industries.

One politician did stand up. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., denounced what she called "the backroom negotiations'' and said she could not endorse the deal.

Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, head of the Senate Banking Committee, and a big benefactor from campaign contributions from the financial industry,  had earlier promised to continue pushing the financial overhaul legislation despite disagreements with the White House.   This need was ended when the lying adulterer and his cohorts saw the possibilities for their own advantages. 

Wall Street and the banking and insurance industries had spent millions of dollars in recent years pushing for the financial overhaul legislation, insisting they only had the consumer's good in mind.  With new approaches consumers will get one-stop financial shopping and become more subservient to larger financial institutions.

The 1999 "coin operated" Congress had come closer than ever to enacting legislation, but industry lobbyists had worried that their contributionpayments might not yield fruit until the year 2,000.

Of course, knowledgable, consumer advocates and honest lawmakers have criticized the financial overhaul legislation as inadequate in many areas.

The Glass-Steagall Act erected a wall between the banking and securities businesses. To understand the need for the Glass-Steagall Act it helps to realize it was written in 1933, when the U.S. was in one of the worst depressions of its history. One out of four workers were unemployed. The nation's banking system was chaotic. Over 11,000 banks had failed or had to merge, reducing the number by 40 per cent, from 25,000 to 14,000. Many State Banks were closed. Congressional hearings of 1933 showed that the big money leaders of America's financial instutions were guilty of disreputable, dishonest and stupid dealings that lead to gross misues of the public trust.

America's Politicians repeated this stupidity with the S&L scand als, by freeing S&L's (their campaign contributors) to take greater risks.  Now, they are going on to do the same for their really big money contributors.