Ivory marked by the Royal African Company. International Slavery Museum, Liverpool. Wikimedia Commons.
The same Banking Act of 1933 separated the bank that holds deposits from the business of selling new corporate stocks and bonds to the public.
A household that used a bank only to cash a wage gained a simpler promise, that the window was not supposed to be the shop pushing a new stock issue.
A household that had bought securities from a bank affiliate in the 1920s was the customer the separation was written for, and it still bore the loss on what it already owned.
A firm that had done both businesses had to split, and the partners had to choose whether they were bankers or sellers of securities.
The provisions known as Glass-Steagall kept commercial banks out of underwriting corporate securities and limited their ties to firms that did that work.
Government bonds were treated differently, and banks could still deal in some securities inside the rules.
For a depositor, the account that paid the grocer was not supposed to finance a speculative issue down the hall.
Banking Act of 1933, 48 Stat. 162