One of several important policy differences between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton -- that will likely come up at the first Democratic debate next Tuesday -- concerns the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era legislation that separated investment from commercial banking and was repealed in 1999 by Bill Clinton and congressional Republicans. Bernie wants it resurrected; Hillary doesn't. Here's a piece explaining why Bernie is right and Hillary is wrong.

I’ve also heard bank executives claim there’s no reason to resurrect Glass-Steagall because none of the big banks actually failed.

This is like arguing lifeguards are no longer necessary at beaches where no one has drowned. It ignores the fact that the big banks were bailed out. If the government hadn’t thrown them lifelines, many would have gone under.

Remember? Their balance sheets were full of junky paper, non-performing loans, and worthless derivatives. They were bailed out because they were too big to fail. And the reason for resurrecting Glass-Steagall is we don’t want to go through that ever again.

As George Santayana famously quipped, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the roaring 2000’s, just as in the Roaring Twenties, America’s big banks used insured deposits to underwrite their gambling in private securities, and then dump the securities on their customers.

It ended badly.

This is precisely what the Glass-Steagall Act was designed to prevent – and did prevent for more than six decades.

Hillary Clinton, of all people, should remember.