a troubled asset purchase program. all of this goes back to many, many banks. now it s especially in europe, but two, three years ago, it was in the u.s., borrowed too much, lent too much, had too much leverage, too little capital, and the causes of that problem essentially are still in place. we added some additional regulations, but we didn t undo the things that led to the collapse. which is no capital requirements, basically capitalism in the banking system without capital. so you can do whatever it s a gambling parlor? well, you know, we used to have on the investment bank side, we had something called the net capitalization rule in place, since 1975, that limited it to 12 to 1 on the traditional depository banks. there s been a series of decreases in the amount of capital required. this has been a long, slow grind
these various rules, such as graham such as go back to the 33, 34, 35 legislation that passed glass-steagall, things like that. kept wall street separate from wall street. in fact, the 1987 crash is a great example. the market plummets 23% in a day, doesn t impact the regular depository banks. we ve, over time, removed those limitations. we ve allowed banks to bulk up and become much bigger. the irony, post-2008 collapse is, banks are now the top ten banks are bigger than they ve ever been, they re all highly interrelated, and so when one bank catches a cold, everybody gets the flu. and it s really a problem. the solution to this is to put those protections back in place, overturn the various legislations that allowed more leverage, no regulations on