"Senator Sanders, that simply isn't true. That is a lie invented for a slimy attack ad during the 2008 campaign. There is an overwhelming consensus--not from Wall Street, but from watchdogs and academics -- that the repeal of Glass-Steagall did not cause the financial crisis. Fact checker after fact checker after fact checker after fact checker has found the claim to be, at best, an enormous stretch. They were doing so, from all parts of the political spectrum, years before you launched a presidential campaign.
The law had little if anything to do with the practices leading up to the crisis. It aimed, as you well know, to separate commercial from investment banking. You can support that policy or oppose it, with honest, pro-regulatory arguments on either side. I might even agree with you. But you cannot with a straight face blame the financial crisis on its absence." - https://berniesanders.com/yes-glass-steagall-matters-here-are-5-reasons-why/
According to Princeton's Alan S Blinder:
"I often pose the following question to critics who claim that repealing Glass-Steagall was a major cause of the financial crisis: What disasters would have been averted if Glass-Steagall was still on the books?
I've yet to hear a good answer. While mortgage underwriting standards were disgraceful, they were promulgated by banks and mortgage finance companies and did not rely on any new GLB powers. The dodgy MBS were put together and marketed mainly by free-standing investment banks, not by newly created banking-securities conglomerates. All five of the giant investment banks (Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns) got themselves into severe trouble without help from banking subsidiaries, and their problems certainly did not stem from conventional investment banking activities--the historic target of Glass-Steagall. Similarly, Wachovia and Washington Mutual died (and Bank of America and Citigroup nearly did) of banking diseases, not from entanglements with or losses imposed on them by related investment banks. In short, I don't see how this crisis would have been any milder if GLB had never passed." - http://www.ijcb.org/journal/ijcb10q4a13.pdf
