Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley made this decision on their own because they felt it was too risky to do otherwise. This severely limits their ability to innovate new forms of investment, etc., as there are a lot more restrictions on their activities. The counterweight to that is they are guaranteed cheaper lending rates.
They used to do things like have a 30 to 1 margin of investments and loans to actual assets, which the Federal Reserve will no longer let them do.
The volatility of the free market in a way forced them into doing this, but regardless, the implications on Wall Street will be enormous. Now there are no more independent security companies on Wall Street.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
