Banking and Monetary Reform The Big Crash starting 2008 brought with it a widespread awareness of the extent to which banks have bent over backwards to invent ever more complex gambling devices without apparently any thought that gamblers might one day lose their (or our) shirts, awareness, too, of their gross misuse of resources at their disposal and scant regard for their status as guardians of the nation's monetary system. The complexity of the risks they were increasingly taking and their subsequent downfall is the major element in our current financial troubles. Solutions have been proposed. In 2009 the hot topic was the separation of banking functions. Ruth Sutherland summarized the idea in The Observer's Business & Media section dated 22.03.09: “It doesn't take the biggest brain on the planet to divine that casinos and savings banks are very different beasts. That is why there is a growing clamour from luminaries including Bank of England governor Mervyn King and former Chancellor Nigel Lawson to look at introducing Glass-Steagall type rules. Glass-Steagall was the 1930s regulation in the US that separated banks' function as utilities from their gambling activities; it came out of their belief that banks' speculation on the stock markets with their savers' money helped cause the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Its repeal in 1999 by the Clinton administration was driven by powerful banking interests, a textbook case of politicians bowing to the finance industry, which had conducted a $300m lobbying assault.” Banks' gambling activities would then be conducted as separate, ring-fenced entities, selling properly described and monitored investment funds into which purchasers would invest knowing the precise activities undertaken and relevant risk/reward ratios. Indeed, Britain's Investment Fund industry is already highly regulated and responsibly marketed. The problem arises when complex risks and speculation are undertaken clandestinely, masquerading as simple deposit-taking banking.