>>>"The bill is anti-consumer and anti-community," advocate Ralph Nader declared. "It will mean higher prices and fewer choices for low-, moderate- and middle-income families across the nation." In addition, he said, "Personal privacy will be virtually eliminated" under provisions allowing affiliated businesses of the newly merged companies to share customers' personal financial data as they offer one-stop shopping.
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>>Nader was concerned about 'higher ATM fees'.
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>Where did you get that? And, privacy issues aren't a concern?
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>>Do you know what was that bill about by the way?
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>"opening the way for a blossoming of financial "supermarkets" selling loans, investments and insurance." it says - which I read as allowing investment banks, mortgage banks and insurances to merge, which seems to have not been possible before that.
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>Though, I find Gramm's announcement about "stability" to be a nice ironic touch. The government regulation, if I remember my history and political economy courses well, was introduced to prevent the boom/bust cycles or at least make them easier. I expected deregulation to bring them back, sooner or later.

The original bill came about after the 29 fiasco (if you read it you can see). It was meant to avoid that mess in the future (and what is happening now) . The bill was repealed in 1999 and now we have the results.