I have always been a supporter of renewing Glass-Steagall, its works.
Glass-Steagall Fans Plan New Assault If Volcker Rule Deemed Weak
By Phil Mattingly & Cheyenne Hopkins - Dec 9, 2013 12:01 AM ET
Five U.S. agencies will finish the Volcker rule tomorrow after more than three years of Wall Street resistance to its limits on trading and investing. Lawmakers and their allies who want to rein in big banks are ready to pounce if it isn’t strict enough.
Politicians and advocates -- some Democrats, some Republicans -- who blame the 2008 financial crisis on deregulation express concern that the Volcker rule won’t adequately block banks from making risky bets with their own money. If they deem the rule too weak, they say it will add fuel to a push to reinstate a Depression-era law known as Glass-Steagall that until 1999 split banks and securities firms.
Such vows suggest U.S. lenders planning to challenge the ban in court risk a political backlash. A 2011 draft of the rule, required by the Dodd-Frank Act at the urging of former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, disappointed some politicians and organizations who wanted a stronger ban. Lawmakers already have drafted legislation.
“If people aren’t satisfied with the implementation of this thing, that’ll redouble the pressure to go back and look for something else,” Marcus Stanley, policy director for Americans for Financial Reform, an umbrella group of more than 250 organizations pushing for stronger restrictions on Wall Street. “The Volcker rule was the major thing that said that these guys just crashed the world economy and we’re going to ban something.”
The rule aims to reduce the chances that banks will put federally insured depositors’ money at risk by banning proprietary trading. The Dodd-Frank Act proposed limited exemptions on the ban for some hedging and market-making trades. The debate since has focused on how those exemptions should be defined.
more:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-09/glass-steagall-fans-plan-new-assault-if-volcker-rule-deemed-weak.html
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