Glass-Steagall Act
Also called: Glass Steagall, banking act of 1933
Glass-Steagall separated commercial from investment banking in 1933 and created federal deposit insurance. Its separation provisions were repealed in 1999. Whether that repeal caused the 2008 crisis is genuinely disputed — the institutions that failed first were pure investment banks and thrifts that Glass-Steagall wouldn't have constrained — but it remains the most cited law in arguments about bank structure.