There has been a chorus of voices on the Left blaming the deregulation of banks–specifically, the repeal of Glass-Steagall–for causing the current difficulties in the financial-services industry. Obama, though more sensible in his approach to these issues than most members of this chorus, has joined it on this point:

A decade later we have deregulated the financial sector and we face another crisis. A regulatory structure set up for banks in the 1930s needed to change, because the nature of business had changed. But by the time the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999, the $300 million lobbying effort that drove deregulation was more about facilitating mergers than creating an efficient regulatory framework.

The bill to repeal Glass-Steagall was called Gramm-Leach-Bliley, as in Rep. Jim Leach, who has now endorsed the guy who basically said he was at best a patsy for a $300 million lobbying effort.