>> today's talk by matthew p fink is something i have been looking forward to because i like matt. i don't know anything about the subject. i will be learning with you today also. matt comes to us -- he is retired now. he spent the bulk of his career with the mutual fund association. he wrote what you described to me as a landmark on mutual funds. he followed it up with this book last year. carter glass and financial regulation. he has a few images to supplement his discourse and then he will take some questions. come on up. >> i had an interesting experience coming here today. i live in chevy chase, maryland. i called lyft and they came within a minute. i had barely put my tie on, and when i got in the car, i realized i had not put a belt on my trousers. i did not want to be standing here with my pants falling down, so one of my colleagues found a belt. you are safe from that at least. carter glass was a major figure in american history. i will talk for 20 or 25 minutes and then take questions. a recent writer called him the single most important lawmaker in the history of american finance. i think that's true, but very few people know about him today. i spoke recently at the historical society of virginia where glass is from, and no one in the audience knew anything about carter glass, but a lot of people were related to him. that's what led me to my book. i want to say three things about glass. glass was a racist and a complete reactionary. he made his fame getting the virginia constitution amended at the end of the 19th century to prevent 95% of blacks in the state of virginia from voting. he was a democrat. he opposed 80% of the new deal. he was a total reactionary racist and he hated change and him reform. he came to the senate in 1920. the senate then had an operator run phone system. they switched on automatic, where you could dial yourself. glass insisted they go back to operator, and they did. him him he was at the mayflower hotel in downtown washington during the week. he came in one morning to find out the mayflower had renovated its lobby and he left the hotel in a huff. he did not like any kind of change. reactionary in his personal life him and political life. second point, he made a major exception in the case of laws dealing with finance. he not only supported but he authored three very important laws designed to curb the power of american finance, the federal reserve act of 1913, the glass-steagall act of 1933, and portions of the securities and exchange act of 1934. so, glass disliked and distrusted government. he disliked and distrusted even more wall street. the third point is i think the most interesting. he like many others, like brandeis, believed that the way to deal with finance was not to regulate it, that regulation would always fail. him instead, the way to deal him him instead, the way to deal with financial power was to break it up, fragmented. general reactionary. he made the exception in the case of laws dealing with finance, and believe the way to deal with finance was not through regulation but through fragmentation. let me talk about his background. he was born in virginia two years before the civil war. lynchburg was a perfectly southern town. there were confederate soldiers up in the hills around lynchburg. him him the union were running through lynchburg. his family like many southern families was devastated by the civil war and reconstruction. he was largely self educated. he read shakespeare, english poets, greeks and romans. he went to work at age 14 and started selling newspapers on the corner in lynchburg. him he became the assistant to the printer, called the printer's devil in those days, then the printer, then a reporter, then the editor. the owner arranged for people with money to lend glass the money to buy the newspaper. glass was an extremely successful publisher of the lynchburg news. he bought the morning paper, bought the afternoon paper, installed presses, wrote editorials on everything from a case in france to reconstruction in the united states. he made -- for that time in that area -- a lot of money. like a lot of successful business people, he decided to go into politics. there was only one party to be in in virginia then, the democratic party. he was elected and was the guy who came up with the formula in the virginia constitution that prevented most blacks and a lot of whites from voting. believe it or not, that made glass a hero to white virginia. he was a big figure in the state, so he was elected to congress in 1902. he was elected as a democrat, and he might as well not be there because the republicans had firm control of the national government. teddy roosevelt was in the white house. republicans had overwhelming majorities. democrats like glass were isolated. he wanted to go on the foreign affairs committee. he did not get that. he was put on the house banking committee. he had no background or interest in banking and that's where he was put. always a conscientious striver, he read every article and book and spoke to every person he could speak to about finance. he educated himself on finance just as he had on shakespeare and the english poets. at that time, the united states was the only major industrial country in the world that did not have a central bank or similar mechanism to control the currency. england had the bank of england. france the bank of france. germany the bank of germany. there was no such entity in the united states. a few business people and intellectuals worried about this, but nobody paid much attention. the economy was doing well. teddy roosevelt, the president, found banking very boring, which i agree with him. no we dealt with banking is used. then comes the panic of 1907. the worst financial panic until 1929. a number of companies fail. they threatened to bring down brokerage firms, insurance companies, and the new york stock exchange. there is no federal or state entity that can deal with this kind of panic. the panic is stopped when one individual, jp morgan, who had a small investment banking firm, went around and raised money from his other friends on wall street, other banks and securities firms, and they raised money and rescued a number of failing banks and trust companies. the panic stopped. the economy came back. morgan was kind of hero. suddenly, congress realized, we can't go on like this. as one of them said, we are going to have panics in the future and we won't have jp morgan with us forever. there was a real conversation among people who care about this kind of stuff that we need something like the bank of england or the bank of germany. congress names a very powerful senator, nelson aldrich, probably the most powerful republican senator -- i can't think of anyone today of that stature and power -- and a special committee of congress to draft legislation to provide the equivalent of the bank of england or the bank of germany. he assembles every expert he can think of in the united states, bankers, businessmen, professors, students of finance generally. they go overseas. they meet with people in london, paris, berlin, and they develop a model for a very powerful u.s. central bank, modeled largely on the bank of germany. one main office, probably in new york city. not government controlled, controlled by private bankers. a very powerful private banking organization modeled on the german central bank. had aldrich and his colleagues introduced that plan in 1908, 1909, 1910, it probably would've been enacted. we had come out of a panic and aldrich had the business community behind him, but republicans did not act. they had the feeling they would be in power forever. they had largely run the government since the civil war, and probably felt they would run the government for another 50 years. the do anything in those years. by the time he introduced his plan in congress, the country had swung in a progressive way. democrats are taking control of the house. progressive republicans had taken control of the senate. they were not about to enact a conservative, private bank like aldrich was proposing, so the aldrich plan died. the house is now controlled by the democrats. the ball is in their court. who do they name to prepare their version of a central banking type bill but carter glass? they don't know much about him but he is probably the only guy, at least in the democratic party in the house, who had ever studied banking issues. so he is named to devise the democratic plan. he comes up with a scheme very few people had talked about or thought of. he is not going to have a single, central bank as they have in england, france, and germany. he's going to have series of regional reserve banks in 12 or 20 cities around the country because he does not want finance centered in new york. he wants it scattered around the country. he wants a central bank in virginia to help farmers and merchants. he wants a bank in sacramento or san francisco to help california farmers, merchants, and bankers, so he comes up with the regional reserve banking system of x number of reserve banks. he realizes he has to have somebody on top of this to coordinate these reserve banks, so he says i will use the control of the currency. he names atop federal banking official whose main job it is to authorize national banks. if you wanted a bank at that time you went to the state or you went federally. if you went federally, this was the guy who oversaw the license. one author had a very good characterization. the aldrich plan was called the national reserve association. glass called his the federal reserve association. it was federal in nature. when he comes up with the scheme, we don't know who the next president is going to be. it's early 1912, and we are headed to the most famous election probably in american history, the 1912 presidential election. three major candidates. the republican president, william howard taft, teddy roosevelt who had been a republican president but now is in the progressive party, and woodrow wilson, a democratic governor from new jersey. nobody knows when glass comes up with his plan who is going to be the next president. wilson gets 40% of the vote, is elected. he and glass had never met but glass contacts him, goes to visit him, and glass says i've got a great deal for you. i've come up with this banking scheme. and glass and wilson kinda fall in love with each other. they are both southerners, virginians, racists. they don't like a strong federal government. glass's plan is just the kind of thing wilson would like, and he does. he says carter, i would like to make one change. i don't want a controller to be on top. why don't we have an independent board of disinterested people who will be in charge of the system? we now have a plan for a federal reserve system of 12 or 20 reserve banks around the country under the general supervision of a board and washington, d.c. this gets presented to congress, and all hell breaks loose. republicans love the plan, and this is complete heresy. some hayseed from a town in virginia is proposing a regional reserve plan? 90% of republicans cannot wait to kill the plan. a lot of the democrats from the south and west hate anything with the name bank. they are andrew jackson's successors. there is complete fragmentation, but glass, very clever, gets the bill through the house of representatives. even though he is just a congressman, he plays a big role in getting the bill through the senate. it's almost regarded as a miracle, but on christmas day, 1912, woodrow wilson signs into law the federal reserve act. and glass, while most americans don't know him, is a huge figure now in american finance and american politics. a year before, nobody knew his name. now he is a major figure in finance and american politics politics. a virginia senator dies and the governor of virginia names glass to a term in the senate. glass is elected four more times. there he is in 1920, a united states senator. i ought to go back and say the most interesting thing about glass is he believed in fragmentation and the federal reserve reflects that. fragmented economic power. he's a senator, well respected, on the cover of time magazine a couple of times, a big figure. and like anybody else watching the country in late 1920, he notices the stock market is going up in 1927, 19 28, 19 29, and like any other observer he notices what's happening is money from across the country is pouring into wall street so investors can buy stock on margin. there were no federal or state limits on how much you could borrow, what a bank would allow, so at that time, in 1928, if you had $2000, you could buy $10,000 of stock. that meant if the stock went up another $2000, you would double your money. but you are very highly leveraged. my wife's grandfather owned a farm outside of philadelphia. he put all his money into stock on margin. my father's older brother put all of his money in the market. glass said where is this money coming from? it's coming from all across the country. the bank in sacramento, richmond, wichita is not lending to local farmers and merchants. the bank in wichita is lending to chase manhattan bank in new york, which is lending to merrill lynch, which is lending to its customers. money is coming from across the country, a river of gold, a lot of money from across the country pouring into wall street from brokers loans. glass is horrified by this. he is even more horrified when he finds out the regional reserve banks are lending money to the local banks who are lending to chase manhattan or citibank and then to merrill lynch, and then to my uncle and my wife's grandfather. so, this system glass had created to prevent concentration in new york is now being used in a very efficient way to get that concentration. these federal reserve banks are funnels making it easier for money to go to new york city. glass is horrified. his whole federal reserve scheme has been dashed by circumstance. he jumps up and down. he goes to the federal reserve board -- which he created -- and says do something. they say not a bad idea, carter. it is a little dangerous. we will have to think about it. they kind of blow them off. he goes to congress. he writes editorials. he gets ridiculed by his colleagues in the senate. he gets ridiculed by wall street. they hire a professor at princeton who publishes a book in may of 1929 called wall street and washington which calls glass and his colleagues a bunch of hayseeds. these uneducated country rubes are making fun of the greatest economic system the world has ever created. they are hayseeds. they are anti-darwin. well, we all know what happens. october 1929, just as glass and others had fears, the stock market breaks. all kinds of people can't meet their margin requirements. the go bankrupt. they have to borrow money. they jump out of skyscrapers. we see what happens when leverage reverses itself. there is devastation. congress in firm republican hands decides it has to do something. so they write remedial legislation named for carter glass. glass starts preparing a bill to prevent this from ever happening again. his main concern is the river of gold, so he puts provisions that limit how much a commercial bank and lend to security speculation, how much they can lend to buy stock, to brokerage firms, to other banks. he puts a total ban on reserve banks lending to banks in their community for speculation. at that point, glass was probably ready to go home. he hoped to get it through congress. but two other things come along. one is deposit insurance. in the late 1920's and early 1930's, banks around the country -- 5000 banks failed, mostly in farming and rural states. the bank of wichita lends on wheat. the price of wheat plummets. cotton in the south, same story. 5000 small banks fail. everybody in the country who has more than a high school education thanks deposit insurance is the stupidest idea ever. hoover, roosevelt, the federal reserve board, citibank, everybody thinks it's awful because you will be making good banks that are run well pay premiums to shore up bad banks. banks that are run well pay premiums to shore up bad banks. everybody said it's just awful. i had a quote in my book the other day that i really liked. i am not going to find it naturally. oh, here. just before the inauguration, roosevelt comes in. so glass has to put deposit insurance in his bill to get the reforms he wants on restricting bank lending and reserve lending for speculation. he knows he has to have deposit insurance. he hates the idea, but he puts it in. roosevelt is coming in, just about to be inaugurated, and he has to decide what to do. vice president gardner says to fdr, they are all down now anyway, the weak and the strong. you will have to come up with deposit guarantees eventually. everybody knows deposit guarantees will be a part of it. that's the second major part of the glass-steagall act, deposit insurance. the third is what we know the act for today, though it was not a big deal then. what happened was, at the start of the 20th century, the big banks in new york city and chicago want to expand from the banking business of making loans to underwriting and dealing in securities. but their lawyers, sherman, sterling, and the other lawyers read the national banking act of 1864 and say it is illegal to do that. the national banking act does not allow national banks to deal in securities. so, they come up with a scheme. they create separate companies called security affiliates. they have the same officers and directors as the bank. you get a stock certificate that shows you own 50 shares of citibank and 50 shares of the affiliate. the stock certificate they sell. in your drawer you have 50 shares of citibank. you get a letter, here is a replacement certificate. you now own shares of the bank and the affiliate. they become a huge thing in the 1920's. all big banks have them. banks can only do business in their home state that there is no geographic limit on their securities affiliate. the oddity is in 1929 citibank's basically doing business in new york. its securities affiliate is doing business in all 48 states. it is the biggest securities firm in the country. these affiliates engage in a lot of dubious practices. an issue comes up, as glass is working on his bill, he did his limits on lending and speculation. got stuck with deposit insurance. what should he do about securities affiliates? glass's first bill provided they would be regulated national bank affiliate regulated by control of the currency and state banks their affiliates were regulated by the fed. that is glass's first bill. his second bill takes a very different approach and outlaws securities affiliates. bans banks from being affiliated with securities firms. and i did a lot of research and i was trying to find out what drove glass to make this change. one writer who was one of fdr's advisor said glass always wanted to do this. i don't know if that's true or not, but if he made a change, why did he change? and i did not a find a clear reason. one was back in 1907, the same year that glass was given the job of creating the federal reserve on another committee of congress called for certain financial reforms and one reform they called for was banning securities affiliates. so there was precedent in the democratic party not to allow securities affiliates. second, glass's first approach was regulation but in the 1920's he had gone to the regulators said all this money is being poured into speculation. you can do something and they blew him off. glass was not a believer in the efficacy of regulation. third when the fed testified before glass's committee and he said what should we do about securities affiliates, the fed gave the following answer. if we could do it all over again we would not have them but it is hard to unscramble the eggs. if you want to get rid of them, here is some language you can use if you want to. that was not exactly a ringing endorsement over revelatory a regulatory approach. as glass is teetering as to what to do, two related events happen that force him to go for separation, abolishment. one is a major bank in new york, bank of the united states fails. it is not a white shoe downtown wall street bank. it is a bank for immigrants. it has the misleading name of bank of the united states so a lot of immigrants thought it was part of the government. it fails and it has 59 affiliates. real estate affiliates, not securities affiliate. but the headlines in new york city are full of bank of new york with affiliate sales leaving 200,000 depositors bankrupt or destitute. and so the word securities affiliate has a bad sound. second, that leads the banking commissioner of new york, joseph broderick, to introduce legislation to ban state, new york state charter banks from having securities affiliates. the most powerful financial state in the country is now proposing to get rid of affiliates, and glass follow s suit. i think these different elements, the early democratic call to get rid of affiliates, glass's dealings with regulators in the 1920's, the fed or the bank of the united states -- the failure of the bank of the united states caused glass to separate to required banks to get rid of their securities affiliate. that is what we remember glass steagall for today. so, glass gets this bill done. remember in 1912, he presented president wilson with a draft of the federal reserve act. glass now goes to franklin roosevelt, who's about to come in and gives them a draft of the glass steagall act that has these limits on lending for speculation, deposit insurance, banning bank affiliates. roosevelt hesitates because he, like everybody else, thinks deposit insurance is a terrible idea, but eventually events cause roosevelt to support the glass-steagall act. so that is the second major accomplishment of glass. fragmentation is a better thing to addressing than regulation. because the glass-steagall act instead of providing regulation of securities affiliates provides for their abolition. the third act in which glass played a major role is securities. when the new deal comes in on its list of reforms are dealing with the securities markets. and in 1933, in the first 100 days, the same period when glass steagall was signed by roosevelt, they enact the securities act of 1933, which says a new issuer of security like lyft and uber happened by full and fair disclosure to investors. that passes without controversy. in the first 100 days, the dream period of the new deal. wall street does not like it, but it has to swallow it. and the regulater the new dealers pick is the federal trade commission, an agency created in the wilson administration. it was full of liberals hung out in the 1920's hoping democrats would come back into power. it is a large agency full of liberals, and it gets the 1933 act. 1934, the roosevelt administration, the new dealers want to take up the second part of securities regulation regulating stockbrokers and the new york stock exchange. the new york stock exchange then was a very powerful institution. i don't know if we have anything comparable today. it was powerful economically, politically, socially. it was a very strong institution and the new dealers proposed to regular it. there was a lot of fighting as to what that regulation looks like. and who should the regulator be? the new dealers say what we want is the federal trade commission. the new york stock exchange says, no, we want a new agency to regulate us and stockbrokers because we think you need real expertise. they probably think they can control the new agency. and so the new deal bill is put in, and it provides that the 1934 act is directed by the federal trade commission and authority over the margin will be given by the federal reserve board. glass goes ape, goes crazy for two reasons. he does not want the fed having anything to do with the stock market. he does not want the fed to have margin authority. and he does not want the ftc, this big agency, to have power. he wants a specialized agency with securities knowledge to regulate and do margins. roosevelt won't back down. and this is 1934, the height of roosevelt's power. and there is a fight in the senate banking committee between roosevelt and glass on the other. and by 10-8 vote, glass wins. they vote against roosevelt to create the securities and exchange commission to regulate securities activities and margin. later on, margin gets dropped a nd goes back to the fed. in this kind of unexpected vote, we see glass's fragmentation approach. rather than give new authority to the federal trade commission, let's fragment regulatory authority and have a specialized agency, the securities and exchange commission. so those are the three acts i wanted to talk about, the federal reserve act of 1913, the glass-steagall act of 1933, and the securities and exchange act of 1934 creating the sec. they all reflect glass' approach. another thing about these laws, they've all been amended over time. they are pretty old. they are largely in shape today as they were and still form the foundation of the american financial system. the federal reserve act was amended in 1935 to increase the power of the federal reserve board and decrease the power of the regional reserve banks, but it's basically the same system that glass proposed, a federal not a national banking system unique in the world. it's 90% of what glass first proposed in 1913. second, the securities exchange act of 1934 creating the sec. every year, every time there is a new election, new president comes in they always have a book of reforms and one of the reforms is to get rid of the sec. there are too many agencies. we have 13 agencies regulating finances. they ought to be combined or the sec should be rolled in with the commodity futures trading commission, whatever. it's never happened. the sec today is still the independent agency that glass envisioned in 1934. the glass-steagall act, well, we know what happened. first the fed, then congress got rid of the provisions banning securities affiliates. that's a major change. today banks engage in all types of securities activities. but the other provisions of the glass-steagall act, deposit insurance, limits on bank lending for speculation, prohibitions on federal reserve banks lending for speculation are there today. so the regulatory framework would have is 80% or 90% of what glass envisioned so many years ago. the last thing i will say is since the second world war, we've moved away from glass's fragmentation approach. instead, we've enacted one law after another imposing more and more regulation on the financial system. when glass started in congress, we only had one financial regulator that controlled the currency. today there are 13. the last act we had was the, excuse me, sarbanes-oxley. dodd-frank, i should say, in 2010, which shows you the regulatory approach full pedal down. this one act, 848 pages. it directs regulators to adopt 243 new rules and to undertake 67 major studies and prepare 22 reports. this is the anti-glass approach on steroids. and yet, when you see people in the financial system, regulators, they all say it is not going to work. we're going to have another financial crisis and dodd-frank will not prevent it. i can give you a list of quotes. here's the inspector general of the treasury. he said, "we had a system that was broken and the fundamentals in the system have not changed. the question is not if the u.s. faces another financial disaster, it is when." we have a system of more regulation, more concentration but people are dubious about if it is going to work. for that reason, a number of people, john mccain, bernie sanders, elizabeth warren have introduced legislation either to restore glass-steagall's prohibitions or increase them by saying no, they will separate banks and securities firms and banks from asset managers. you can't be a bank and manage pension plans and mutual funds. other people have introduced legislation limiting the size of banks, no u.s. banks can have more than 3% of u.s. deposits. i will bet a huge amount of money that if we have any kind of financial crisis in the next year, before the election, let's say, these will come out of the medicine cabinet, we want here again we ought to restore glass steagall. the last thing i one to say is a little bit off-base but that is the current events about the federal reserve board. president trump has called for firing, says he wants to fire the federal reserve chairman powell because he does not like the fed's policy on interest rates. and it's a legal dispute whether he has the power or not. i was wondering what if glass were to come back. what would he think about a president who threatens to fire the chairman of the federal reserve board? well, glass was big on fed independence, and i will tell you how it comes up. when the federal reserve board was created in 1913, it was to have five governors appointed by the president and the secretary of the treasury and the comptroller of the currency. 1935, these two government officials were removed, and glass wanted them removed. he only wanted people appointed by the president and approved by the senate. he did not want administration officials. so, glass would've been opposed to allowing the president to fire the president of the federal reserve. how would glass personally act? well, glass was shorter than i am. he was 5'5", 135 pounds, but he was very feisty. in 1933, he got in a fight off the senate floor with senator hughie long. twice his size. long was 37. glass was 75. glass threw a punch at hughie long. if glass were to run into trump today, and we talk about firing jerome powell, trump would get a black eye. with that, i leave you. i am happy to take your questions. thanks. [applause] yes, sir? >> what happens during the new deal with fdr and fdr decides he will take the country off the gold standard? mr. fink: glass went crazy. he thought it was all illegal. he opposed almost everything roosevelt did. they were at odds constantly. there's a short honeymoon period. they liked each other personally, i think. they were each amused by each other and i think they were afraid of each other. each of them had a power base. roosevelt was very popular in virginia. he carried the state four times. glass and harry byrd controlled virginia. glass had a lifetime job in the senate. so glass would oppose a lot of roosevelt did, but they never went to the mat on it. he kept a lot of his hate of the policies to himself. they had this relationship. a lot of people have written about this. my boook talks about different theories. they were both very good politicians, and they admired that. they admired each other and kept their distance from each other. yes? >> did glass have any participation the famous jekyll island meeting? mr. fink: no. >> you described a little bit about how that just died because they took too long, the aldrich plan. but how did this guy, who was early in his political career, get the political mojo to got to -- go to wilson and develop this alternative plan? mr. fink: the first question is easy to answer. jekyll island, when aldrich was starting to develop, aldrich was taking his time and some of the bankers in europe got impatient. he was playing with theories in this. let's all get together and have a secret conclave. we'll go duck hunting on this island off georgia. and we'll go down there for a weekend and we will draft something. that's what happened. that is where the aldrich plan got finalized. nothing to do with glass. i don't think anybody knew he had this mojo but they had nobody else. the party had not been in power for long. there was nobody with expertise in finance. glass on his own studied these things. so, i think he just, saw the opportunity or they gave it to him. so, he develops the plan in the house banking committee. then he presented to wilson. there was an absence of any other democratic banking guru. that's my own, it is a very good question. >> thank you. mr. fink: yes, sir? back here? >> a footnote to your speech. i'm curious. what was the formula they came up with in virginia constitution ? mr. fink: oh. a poll tax and a literacy test. it's something like you had to pay, i'm making this up, you have to pay a dollar year for three years so you can vote the fourth year. you had to do it on a certain day. the understanding clauses they had to bring in citizens and you cannot get the right to vote unless you can answer the examiner's, what does the second amendment syay? it was a combination of poll tax and the understanding clause. that is what glass put together. he was a leader, if one could use that word, of that. yes, ma'am? >> you describe glass is self-educated. he has a tremendous type of philosophy. so, i think way back in the constitution is all one piece of paper, but is so rich. and people had some kind of integrity to follow to do something right. but now i'm thinking that like had to have so many -- [indiscernible] the people do not understand it and they do not even read it. now we have the interest rate is just some variation from the competitive markets. so, somehow, it is wrong. and financial institutions, whoever appointed to be official there, is influenced by some kind of corrupted system in a sense. mr. fink: i'm sorry, your question is? >> my question is -- how has the system changed to make our system so corrupted and nobody can really change it? mr. fink today? i don't know. that is out of my pay grade. i think if you ask those people, wilson and glass and brandeis in 1913, they would say the system is pretty corrupt. that's what drove the wilson programs and the new freedom, and the glass-steagall act was part of it. tariff reduction was part of it. they thought they were dealing with a pretty corrupt system. it was run by wall street. the banks, the central banks and every other country were run by the financiers. so, they -- but i think they probably would have the same optimism-pessimism. gary? thank you. >> one question on the regulator side and one on anti-regulation. were there origins in glass's mind for what we call risk-based capital or normal ratios of capital for banks? second was at some point in the earlier years to the idea of going offshore with financial institutions basically stay beyond the waters of u.s. banking regulations, did it have its origins in this period? mr. fink: i am unaware of any talk about going offshore. during my lifetime they had that. it was complete baloney. it was a false. people who oppose regulation would say the next drop of regulation, they would give a list of horrors. never happened. no, i didn't hear any of that. they did say that if you enact the 1933 act, the grass will grow on the streets of wall street. that was a quote from allen dulles. the offshore thing i never heard of, no. yes, sir? >> excuse me. around that time, the federal credit union act was passed. fha was created, and fannie mae was created around that time. mr. fink: around what time? >> the 1930's. would that have been gone to the house banking committee? mr. fink: glass was a senator. my guess is he opposed it. he opposed, believe it or not, somebody has done a study of the 90 new deal or 80 or 70 new deal laws, he opposed 81% of them. you can bet he almost, he probably opposed fha. certainly if anything out of a social ben, make the world better. glass was probably opposed. if anything had a social bent. he was honest. the best quota had to have a he react to the gold standard? when roosevelt first came in banks were failing all over the country. and roosevelt ordered all the banks in the united states to be closed, and glass said to a friend the president of united states has no more right to close every bank in the united states than my stable boy. glass was always, he played country. racial tinge there, too. bet he opposed most other things. i don't know. >> why he opposed what wall street was doing before the crash. was he against speculation in general? mr. fink: no. what he said. he wrote a new york times editorial. or letter to the editor which said, he said, i don't care about speculation but it is using the federal reserve system for reasons i never intended. that's what he wrote. the federal reserve was his baby. and created with certain things in mind, largely to get money to local communities and local merchants and bankers and tnot to be used to go to wall street. i don't think speculation bothered him as much as the system was being used for purposes he did not intended. >> even though it creates a new governmental agency, it is really giving a lot of responsibility over the financial system to the financial players themselves. it places a lot of faith in the new york stock exchange, the self-regulating entity, puts a lot of faith in brokers to fulfill the information disclosure. whereas, you had the other models from the states in the early 20th century that were more paternalistic, what kind of securities get offered. i'm curious where glass fell on that idea. mr. fink: i think, i never look into it, but my recollection is they weren't thinking about that. the new york stock exchange, number one, did not want anybody. if you asked allen dulles and george witness in 1933, do you want an act to regulate securities? no. do you want an act to regulate the brokers? we don't need it. i don't think they were think about whether they would have direct regulation or delegate to the regulated. i've never seen anything on it. a lot of that unfolded over time. i don't remember much talk about self-regulation at that point. yes, ma'am? yes? >> thanks for taking a second question. did glass participate much in the post-world war i deliberations among all the great powers with regard to the whole german reparations? mr. fink: not that i am aware of. >> he didn't posit as an economist. mr. fink: i've never seen any reference to that. he was a strong supporter of wilson and the treaty of versailles and u.s. entry into the league. probably what drove glass most nuts is the guy at princeton and others who allege that glass was an isolationist, a complete come -- country bumpkin. glass, he loved wilson. he liked wilson so much if wilson told glass to cut off his ears, he would've done it. he was in love with wilson. i'm unaware of any dealings like that. may have been. yes, sir? >> i'm intrigued that harry byrd senior and carter glass were newspaper publishers apparently. is there more to be said about their relationship? mr. fink: they were buddies and would write right bank and forth to each other. i am unaware of any business ties. i have not seen that in glass's papers. anything else? yes, sir? >> how do you build onto the recent crepo-brown banking compromise that was passed? senator crapo and senator brown, their banking reform? mr. fink: i don't know what it is. >> just passed the last congress. two years ago, made some minor modifications to the dodd frank. to ease up on a few less controversial areas. mr. fink: yes. you can usually bet the default with glass is he would oppose it. no. except for the acts he authored, he opposed social security, he opposed the wagner act, the opposed the nra, oppose the agricultural adjustment act. he was for tva, oddly enough. but he generally, he had made it from poverty to the haves, and he thought the world was fine. my general. anything else? well, thank you very much for listening. thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> you are watching american history tv, covering history c-span style with archival films, lectures, and visits to his hymns and historic places. -- museums and historic places. all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. this sunday, kathy price talks about her book information hunters, when librarians, soldiers, and spies banded together in world war ii europe. here is a preview. >> the operation was headed by the only one to serve as a field agent in this project. she had an unusual background. she had grown up in hollywood connected to the film industry. she had a scholarly bent and went to the university of chicago for a phd in medieval linguistics, which she earned in 1930. like many women of her era, she was denied an academic career. she carried on her own research while employed by senior faculty at chicago to go abroad and copy or photograph rare books. she934 at the vatican, witnessed scholars rapidly filming rare books using cameras. she was in germany when the war broke out. she participated in an air raid drill. she left paris ahead of the german invasion, made her way to lisbon, and return to the u.s. , 1941.h she worked very closely with british intelligence. she also developed her own channels of access through librarians and government agencies. she engaged in covert acquisitions. she made contact with danish resistance and worked with the british to smuggle technical periodicals from germany. espionagegaged in along the coast of occupied france according to her family. i have not been able to prove this in the national archives records. her personnel record in college park contains only a single sheet of paper, so somebody raided it at some point. she is still a woman of mystery. >> learn more about how everyday americans worked to aid u.s. intelligence sunday on american history tv. >> up next on lectures in history, guilford technical community college professor jeff kinard teaches a class about civil war weaponry and shares artifacts such as muskets, carbines, and revolvers. he describes advances such as breach loading and rifle barrels that allowed soldiers to fire faster and with more accuracy. mr. kinard: all right, guys. welcome to class. today, as i talked about a little bit earlier this week, we