Heh. First, Commondreams is not necessarily the best source for a citation. Let's turn to Wikipedia, which explains the Citibank/Travelers merger is fairly decent detail[1]. In short, while there was a time limit of five years (the two years is only without Fed approval, which in this case they would have received), that only applied to Travelers, not to Citibank owning the investment bank Salomon Smith Barney. But that's really a minor quibble. Let's step back and think about the overall purpose of those restrictions.

The standard "Glass-Steagall repeal caused the crisis!" meme focuses on the idea that we don't want banks wagering FDIC-insured retail deposits on the financial markets and going bust, taking our savings accounts with them. And maybe we don't - but this did not actually happen. No retail bank went bust due to their investment banking arms getting overextended. Instead we saw retail banks go bust due to their retail banking operations (specifically, mortgages), and we saw investment banks go bust due to their risky bets on markets. Both of those were always legal under Glass-Steagall.

If the standard "Glass-Steagall repeal is evil" meme has any validity at all, it would seem to be in relation to AIG; an insurer who went bust after making risky bets on the financial markets. Surely Glass-Steagall repeal allowed THAT, right? Nope! The one form of intermingling that actually caused problems during the crisis is the one that wasn't banned by Glass-Steagall. It's no wonder that no serious analysts thinks Gramm-Leach-Bliley had any real impact on the crisis.

So yes, as you say, without repeal Citibank would have been forced - eventually - to sell Travelers. And this would have done...precisely nothing, because as it turns out the purchase of Travelers by Citibank was one of the biggest duds of all time. Nobody actually wants to buy insurance at their bank, and giving access to Citibank (who already had a huge pool of retail deposits) access to the huge pool of premiums Travelers had...did, as near as we can tell, nothing whatsoever. And again, other than AIG (who had no retail banking operations), no major insurance company went under during the crisis, nor did any major bank which went under have an insurance arm. So once again, we ask: Did Glass-Steagall actually prevent anything meaningful?

As for MF Global...yes, they've the villain du jour, and very bad people. But they were not a retail bank, and their operations would have been allowed (or, if you prefer, would have been just as illegal) under Glass-Steagall. Again, what purpose do you think the restrictions in Glass-Steagall served? The only answer is "not letting banks gamble with insured deposits on the financial markets", and MF Global did not do that, and so Glass-Steagall repeal did not impact MF Global. (More generally, what MF Global did is illegal, and so any attempt to argue that MF Global proves we need more regulation is inherently flawed.)

As for the comments about brokers... we're talking past each other. However, since you mention it: There's a lot less than meets the eye to the ABACUS deal. At core, GS's wrongdoing was misrepresenting who picked the CDOs. That's illegal and serious, but they weren't on either end of the trade, much less both. They were more like a sporting goods store selling both AP bullets and body armor to both sides of a gang war. They profited on both ends of the deal, but they couldn't care less which side won. Mind you, GS has often managed to find themselves on both ends of a deal. Check out the deal where GS "helped" El Paso Corp sell itself - suspiciously cheaply - to Kinder Morgan, which GS had a big stake in[2]. Dodgy as fuck. And the deal where GS "helped" Burlington Northern sell itself - suspiciously cheaply - to Warren Buffet (a very big investor in GS) wasn't much better... (Mind you, neither had anything to do with Glass-Steagall.)

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act#Fail...

[2]: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/advising-deal-goldman...