With the great financial meltdown upon us, there’s been a surge in interest in the intermingling of commercial and investment banking – and, well, everything under the financial kitchen sink, including insurance. There’s a long, long history here folks. The financial collapse of the Great Depression led to the creation of the Federal National Mortgage Association (yes, that Fannie Mae) and erecting walls between different elements of the financial systems – that is between commercial banks and investment banks and savings and loans or so-called thrifts that once gave us our mortgage loans. That system has been under attack – politically and through technological and business model innovation – literally since day one.
I mentioned recently I wrote my dissertation on all of this. Here’s a short piece from way back when in 1986.
