Occupy Wall Street: Must Know Facts About Big Banks

Wall Street big banks, although not entirely responsible for the Great Recession, most experts agree that banks creating and partying in the subprime securitization [20] mess is one of the major contributing events that broke the camel's back.

The repeal of provisions in 1999 of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 has not only effectively made "Too Big To Fail" a reality and a moral hazard, the subsequent trillion's of dollars in bank bailout [21] funded by the taxpayer has also saddled the already over-indebted nation with even more debt.

Even with the Dodd-Frank financial reform, from a market perspective, there are still issues within the structure of the current banking operation that are not adequately addressed.

First of all, banks should not have prop trading [22] in-house, period.  At the very least, the clearing house and the trading arm now reside withing the same banks need to be completely separated into different companies, with a physical Chinese titanium wall in between.

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