We're not shy about advocating for shareholder rights and making sure our members are heard on important matters that affect our portfolios. That's why the White House asked for feedback from the Motley Fool community and agreed to answer your questions. Here is the third installment of our interview with Austan Goolsbee, chief economist for the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

It's no surprise that investors in Fooldom are outraged about the risky practices and untenable leverage taken on by "too big to fail" financial institutions. That these companies were, in fact, doing business within the letter of the law is fuel for the White House's ambitious plan to overhaul financial regulation.

Many of you who made posts to our article calling for questions about the White House's financial regulation reform plan harkened back to the good old days, when Glass-Steagall was the law of the banking land.

  • Whatsafool wrote: "I have two words to deliver to the Administration: Glass Steagall. This law, dismantled by [former Sen. Phil] Gramm and his ilk, protected Americans from economic collapse very nicely, thank you, for 50 or so years."
  • Markgiese proposed warning labels such as the ones you see on cigarette boxes, to make sure investors know exactly how financial products and services affect the consumer's financial health: "Examples: Brokers don't make money because they help you increase your income, they make money on each completed transaction. Financial advisors don't make money when you successfully retire with a comfortable income. The growth of your nest egg provides a very small incremental improvement in the advisor's overall income. The initial sale is all they are paid to care about. ... Ratings agencies that are paid by the organizations they are rating cannot generate unbiased appraisals."
  • Lastly, 1ChefJeff painted a picture of how he thinks the rules of separation should work: "Reinstate the separation of banking from securities underwriting a la Glass Steagall but without the [loopholes] that existed in Glass Steagall. Banks need to provide credit to individuals and business. ... Insurance companies need to sell insurance. ... Brokers need to advise clients on stocks & bonds. ... Car [manufacturers] need to build cars, not loans. ... Retail chains need to sell product, not be banks ... and all of them need to be small enough to go out of business when they fail to provide what their consumer wants without a major shake-up to the financial marketplace."

Great comments, Fools. And so, on your behalf, David Gardner and I asked Austan Goolsbee, chief economist for the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, if new laws -- a la Glass-Steagall -- are in the cards.

Scroll down just a few inches to watch the video. Or read on for a briefing on the history of banking regulation and how the rules of the road have been changed over time.

Your Glass-Steagall refresher
Glass-Steagall was enacted in 1933, after that other big crash, to protect depositors and taxpayers from exposure to risky banking business practices. The gist of the law was that a company could be either a bank or a brokerage, but it could not be both.

For a while, Glass-Steagall -- along with the 1956 Bank Holding Company Act -- prevented financial institutions from mixing a combustible cocktail of banking and non-banking business, such as dealing in commercial paper and mortgage-backed securities. Then in the 1960s, banking-industry lobbyists began chirping in politicians' ears and got them to chip away at some of the restrictions. By the 1990s, Glass-Steagall was viewed as a relic of overly cautious regulation, and it was eventually repealed.

Flash forward to last year.

On these pages, we've previously debated whether we'd be in this financial mess even if Glass-Steagall were still in place. Read "Who's More to Blame: Wall Street or the Repealers of the Glass-Steagall Act?" for a bull-bear standoff.

Keep those questions and comments coming
As individual investors, we all have a material interest in how President Obama's new rules of the road will affect our portfolios, the financial products and services we use, and the companies in which we invest.

We are committed to keeping our conversation with the administration going and representing you, our community of Fools: Enter your comments below about financial-regulation reform and what changes you, as an individual investor, want the administration to make.

Tomorrow on Fool.com, we talk with Goolsbee about "too big to fail," banks that have become even bigger post-crisis, and how the administration views the present state of the banking industry.


Further Foolishness:

Fool.com columnist Dayana Yochim does her banking and brokering at separate institutions, a la Glass-Steagall. The Motley Fool is investors writing for investors.