Shhh. Hear that? If you listen very carefully, you can hear a murmuring emanating from Washington. Ever since Paul Volcker stood next to President Obama a month ago and the president endorsed the ex-Federal Reserve chief’s call for tighter restrictions on banks, the sound emanating out of Washington has been growing louder: “Reinstate Glass-Steagall!”

The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which erected a Berlin Wall between commercial and investment banking, was one of the earliest and most significant reforms of the Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. It was passed in reaction to the closing of more than 4,000 banks in the wake of Crash of 1929. These banks were, in effect, gambling with the depositors’ money—and they lost.

Glass-Steagall restored confidence in banks, but over time it became treated like a ratty wool blanket that needed to be sent to the cleaners—where it was systematically shrunk. Regulators chipped away at Glass-Steagall during the 1990s, initially by letting banks underwrite municipal bonds, and in 1999 most of its provisions were repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Blilely Act of 1999. That infamous legislation was known at the time, with the keen irony that is the special gift of our lawmakers, as the Financial Modernization Act of 1999.

Yes indeed, henceforth the banking industry began to do business “the modern way,” in the sense that Ralph Kramden used in The Honeymooners to describe particularly klutzy moneymaking schemes. Banks had already begun to venture into the securities business, with bankers ranging from Citigroup’s “financial supermarket” advocate Sandy Weill to the conservative Edmond Safra getting in the act, but they really made use of their new freedom after Gramm-Bliley—and the wreckage of the financial system was their legacy.

Demos, a nonpartisan think tank, observes that “commercial banks played a crucial role as buyers and sellers of mortgage-backed securities, credit-default swaps, and other explosive financial derivatives. Without the watering down and ultimate repeal of Glass-Steagall, the banks would have been barred from most of these activities.”

Not too surprisingly, given the hypocritical 20-20 hindsight over such things, there is now a great deal of hand-wringing over Glass-Steagall, even among former advocates of repeal. Former Citigroup CEO John S. Reed, who helped turn Citigroup into the multifaceted, investment-rich basket case that it is today, recently indicated that he could, maybe, possibly, favor reinstating the banking wall. In Congress there are at least two pending bills that would reinstate something akin to Glass-Steagall, one backed by John McCain. (McCain, as one of the Keating Five, has an intimate acquaintance with banking, as we all know.) While it’s hard to see something as dramatic as a Glass-Steagall-Repeal Repeal taking place—Wall Street lobbyists would go berserk—well, there is that murmuring.

Tackling the whole, variegated mess that is the financial system is far less appealing than a symbolic act such as Glass-Steagall-Repeal Repeal. But if Congress wants to fix that part of the mess—well, it certainly can’t hurt. And let’s face it: When Congress does something nowadays that doesn’t screw things up, it is cause for celebration.