Eric Kachman is volunteer on Wolf-PAC ’s communications team.
The crashes of 1929 and 2008 share similar origins: a lack of appropriate oversight and regulation. Irresponsible banking practices, bad investments and rampant stock market speculation preceded the 1929 crash. The resulting panic collapsed the economy, with unemployment peaking at more than a quarter of the population. Similarly, the crash of 2008 came about due to real estate speculation, and apparently foolish lending and borrowing, spiking foreclosures between 2008 and 2010.
Banks forced millions from their homes, and jobs became scarce in the resulting downturn. With Covid-19, a similar economic situation holds today, especially for those just entering the job market.
Such economic crises have been devastating. In their wake, we have tried drafting legislation to prevent recurrence. However, even after 2008, proposed protections have been blocked or rendered ineffective by the banking industry’s immense influence in Washington, D.C. To ensure a stable and healthy economy, we must enact campaign finance reforms to reduce the power of the banking lobby.
Separating investment banks from commercial banks
Common sense laws and institutions created during the Depression prevented a recurrence for generations. Those achievements included passage of the Glass-Steagall Act and creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Glass-Steagall separated commercial from investment banks, recognizing that commercial retail banks function very differently from investment banks. They’re both essential, but cannot safely exist as a single entity.
Commercial banking is the workhorse of our economy, providing essential everyday services: storing, lending, managing and transferring money. By contrast, investment banks are the racehorses of the financial world. They seek out innovation, and take risks — they play the stock market. They can be engines of economic growth. When the economy is poor, or when they make bad decisions, they risk going under. This is fair: high risk, high reward.
However, investment banks should not subject us all to that risk. Glass-Steagall created a barrier between these two equally important banking functions. Without this firewall, the money we entrust to a bank can be used to gamble on the stock market. If the economy and stock market tank, people can’t withdraw their money — it no longer exists.
Unlearning lessons
So what happened? How did we unlearn the lessons of the Depression? The answer is the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, created by and for the banking industry in 1999. Though styled as a banking “modernization” act, GLBA only reflected the increasing influence of massive campaign donations.
President Bill Clinton publicly vowed to spend no more than the legal limit on campaigning in 1996, but he subverted the law in part by raising money for the Democratic National Committee, making that organization part of his campaign. Breaking promises was nothing new, and still seems the rule. Campaign contributors buy access and influence decision making. Clinton received huge donations from the banking industry, particularly from Goldman Sachs. As a reward, Clinton made Robert Rubin — a major proponent of GLBA who had worked 26 years at Goldman Sachs — Treasury secretary.
GLBA meant deregulation. Resulting mergers and acquisitions again melded commercial and investment banking. They created “too big to fail,” in a sense rendering FDIC protections moot. After all, the FDIC insures depositors against bank failure. The FDIC protects you and me; GLBA protects gluttonous bankers.
The bailout
The bank bailout of 2008 was sold as a cure for the Great Recession, reviving the economy by freeing up credit. In reality, few banks eased credit. As noted by Mike McIntire in The New York Times, the bailout program was “ a no-strings-attached windfall that could be used to pay down debt, acquire other businesses, or invest for the future.”
Banks should serve society but, regardless of what politicians might say, they make us serve the banks. Both parties are complicit. Clinton gave us GLBA; George W. Bush gave us the bank bailout of 2008; Barack Obama’s attempts at reform largely fell flat. For example, to assist financially stressed homeowners, the Obama administration started programs such as the Home Affordable Modification Program. However, banks participating in HAMP rejected 72 percent of the applications, denying help to 4 million citizens.
The root of the problem
Just bringing back Glass-Steagall isn’t the solution. Of course we must separate commercial and investment banks, but that’s not enough. When a mixed commercial/investment bank fails, it wipes out depositors’ savings; when such a bank is too big to fail, that means it impacts a huge portion of the population. When Congress bails out such a failed bank, we pay for it through our taxes. The moral hazard provided by the FDIC or, worse, assurance of a massive bailout, means that the reckless behavior of banks is no longer the bank’s issue, but ours. They privatize the profits and socialize the risk, and we foot the bill. So besides bringing back banking regulation, we must also attack the root of the problem. Only common sense controls on campaign financing can curb the undue influence of the banking industry in Congress.
Are you a customer of JP Morgan Chase? They gave $5,800,208 during the 2020 election cycle. Are you a customer of Capital One? Their financial PAC gave $623,000. Citadel Asset Management donated 13 million dollars. These are not charitable donations. These millions buy political favor, of both Republican and Democratic candidates. Such big money largely controls electoral races at every level — local, state, and federal — protecting their interests at the expense of the public.
A real solution
Neither the Great Depression nor the Great Recession were at all unique. Such crises will happen again as corrupt politicians attack regulations and protect bankers. However, we can address the issue by amending the U.S. Constitution to control campaign financing, removing the corrupting influence of money from our elections. We could thus elect representatives who truly represent us, protecting citizens from rapacious banking. You can help make this change by joining Wolf-PAC, a volunteer organization dedicated to bringing about such an amendment.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.