When both major parties endorsed restoring the Glass-Steagall Act in their campaign platforms last month, they reaffirmed the powerful hold that the Glass-Steagall principle of separating commercial and investment banking has on the public imagination.

Glass-Steagall has become politically popular for good reason. The public understands that reducing the size and (especially) the complexity of our major publicly supported banking institutions is crucial to a healthier financial system. Restoring some version of the Glass-Stegall firewall between commercial and investment banking is a direct and powerful means to that end. There’s also an understanding that the financial system was generally more stable during the 60 years in which Glass-Steagall was in force.

Unfortunately, much of the inside-the-beltway commentary on Glass-Steagall does not add depth and substance to the public debate and is often inappropriately dismissive and shallow. A number of respected experts on the banking system, such as Federal Deposit Insurance…

60 Minutes:

The following is a script from “Fintech” which aired on May 1, 2016, and was rebroadcast on Aug. 21, 2016. Lesley Stahl is the correspondent. Shachar Bar-On, producer.

One sector of our economy after the next is being disrupted by new apps and websites, like bookstores, travel agents, taxis, hotels. Tonight, we’re going to explore whether the banking industry is next on the list. As we first reported in May, thousands of startups are challenging many aspects of banking, the newcomers argue that this important sector is too set in its ways. It’s being called the financial technology — or fintech — revolution. We looked at the birth of one fintech company founded by two young fintechies who started not unlike the founders of Facebook and Microsoft.

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Patrick Collison: In a world where people can send a Facebook message or sort of upload an Instagram photo and…

New York’s top financial regulator slapped a “Panama Papers”-linked bank with a $180 million fine for anti-money laundering violations.

Mega Bank, a $103 billion Taiwanese bank with one New York office, ignored the risks associated with transactions involving Panama, a high-risk area for money laundering, the state Department of Financial Services said in a statement on Friday.

The bank had “suspicious” accounts that were formed with the help of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the center of the “Panama Papers” leak, which revealed companies and wealthy individuals who dodged taxes, the DFS said.

The big-four audit firm PwC is being sued for $5.5 billion over its failure to detect a fraud that resulted in a bank collapse during the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. This is the biggest lawsuit in PwC history.

The complainant is Taylor, Bean & Whitaker (TBW), which was a top-10 wholesale mortgage lending firm. The trustees of the company are accusing PwC of negligence in their audits of TBW’s lender, Colonial Bank.

In an agreement between the top management of the borrower and the bank, starting from 2002, TBW chairman Lee Farkas sent mortgage data to Colonial Bank for fake loans or those the company had already committed or sold to other investors. By the end of 2007, the scheme had helped the bank accumulate about $1.5 billion in fake or impaired loans.

Read on.