"The world changes, and Congress and the laws have to change with it."
"Abraham Lincoln used to like to use the analogy that old and outmoded laws need to be changed because it made about as much sense to continue to impose them on people as it did to ask a man to wear the same clothes he did when he was a child.
"In the 1930s, at the trough of the Depression, when Glass-Steagall became law, it was believed that government was the answer. It was believed that stability and growth came from government overriding the functioning of free markets.
"We are here today to repeal Glass-Steagall because we have learned that government is not the answer. We have learned that freedom and competition are the answers. We have learned that we promote economic growth and we promote stability by having competition and freedom.
"I am proud to be here because this is an important bill; it is a deregulatory bill. I believe that that is the wave of the future, and I am awfully proud to have been a part of making it a reality."
Phil Gramm, on Friday, November 12, 1999 - thusly ruining the financial future of these Americas!
