Firewall

In apartment buildings, firewalls are installed between units, so that if one person’s attempt at cooking Thanksgiving dinner catches their apartment on fire, there is less chance that the flames will spread to other apartments.

In the world of investment banking, firewalls are less physical and more legal, but they serve the same purpose: they prevent the spread of things we don’t want spreading. In this case, we’re preventing our financial information from being spread from investment banks to commercial banks, and vice versa. In other words, firewalls are a legal protection of the privacy of our personal financial deets.

But they also prevent some organizations from comingling certain banking and brokering services, which some say is a political move designed to keep financial lobbies from banding together and standing up to The Man, since it means different financial sectors are often fighting against each other for funding, regulation changes, and other governmental fun. As for us, we’re going to stay out of the political battle and leave it to others to fight that fire.

Get it? Fire? Because we're talking about firewalls.

Okay, we’ll show ourselves out.