Wall Street banks will have two years to implement the so-called Volcker rule so long as they make a “good faith” effort to comply with the ban on proprietary trading, U.S. regulators said. Banks will get the “full two-year period” provided by the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law to “conform” their activities and investments, the Federal Reserve and four other U.S. agencies said in a statement today. The Fed has the authority to extend the period of compliance beyond July 21, 2014, the regulators said. “A lot of sweating brows at big banks are a lot drier today,” said Karen Shaw Petrou, a managing partner at Federal Financial Analytics, a Washington research firm whose clients have included Wells Fargo [Bloomberg]
Dodd-Frank Bill
It Would Be Great If Banks Could Start Complying With Financial Reforms Two Years From Now But No One Should Stress Themselves Out About It Or Anything
By Bess LevinRegulators overseeing financial reform are delaying many of the planned changes in the immense market for complex securities known as derivatives because they are running drastically behind schedule in writing their new rules. The Securities and Exchange Commission said on Wednesday that market participants would not have to comply with many aspects of derivatives reform scheduled to take effect in mid-July. It declined to specify how long the delay would be in the equity derivatives it oversees. [NYT]
The Congressman from Massachusetts is fine with SIFMA holding a $1,000/seat fundraiser for him but his spokesman wants to make it clear that “if Wall Street is trying to buy influence with him, it has been a dramatic failure.” Consider yourselves warned. [MarketPlace]
$123 million and a just under 800 people should do the trick. Read more »
With the passing of the Dodd-Frank Bill, one pesky thing that banks have had to spent a couple hours getting in line with is the Volcker Rule, and what it means for their proprietary trading desks. Whether to spin them off, send the employees to a farm in the country where they can run around, move them to the basement or just rename the group the ‘troprietary prading’ unit, about which no one will be the wiser, the whole thing has been a bit of a headache. One person who hasn’t lost any sleep over the mandate, however, is Vikram Pandit. Because unlike his counterparts at say, Goldman, who’ve clutched their pearls and felt faint at the thought of a world without prop, Vickles got behind the rule before it was even a twinkle in Volcker’s eye. Read more »
The Principal Strategies group has a new home starting in January. Read more »
And they said it couldn’t be done! Read more »
Do You Know What Democrats, Republicans, Wall Street Insiders And Lobbyists Were Doing When They Should’ve Been Crafting Meanginful Financial Reform? Matt Taibbi Knows
By Bess Levin
I’m going to throw something out there that probably shouldn’t come as too much of a shock, knowing what we know about Matt Taibbi, the boy who spent months of late nights hunched over at his typewriter, gnawing the skin off his knuckles trying to figure out how those crooks at Goldman Sachs do it, reportedly threw scalding hot coffee in the face of a reporter who’d offered him constructive criticism and, on at least on occasion, kept a thermos of horse semen in his fridge to later be baked into a pie and smashed into an unsuspecting victim’s face. And here’s what: Matt Taibbi is the kind of guy who will install surveillance cameras in your home and office, without your knowledge, if he is under the believe you’re screwing him over. Ex-girlfriends can probably attest to this fact and now, sort of embarrassingly, Wall Street and Washington can too. Because Matt Taibbi did it to them, and today, in his duty as an American citizen, reports back on what he saw. We’re lucky he did this and will merely describe the scene to us, sparing us the horror show of actually watching it go down ourselves, which would be a harrowing experience. Read more »
Tim Geithner To Talk Financial Reform, Whatever Else People Feel Like Chatting About, This Afternoon
By Bess Levin
He doesn’t want to put the words in your mouth, but if *someone* wanted to ask him how good it felt school the Chinese in that pick-up game, that’d be okay by TG (and if anyone wants to go, he’s got sneaks in the car and this suit is a breakaway).
Later today at NYU Stern, Timothy Geithner, US Treasury Secretary, will give his first public remarks since the enactment of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The Secretary will address the core principles guiding the implementation of these historic reforms and how they will lay the foundation for a new, strong and stable American financial system. After his remarks, the Secretary will answer audience questions. Due to security and space limitations, the event is viewable via a live video link beginning at 4 p.m. Please note that Real Player is required.–NYU Stern Public Affairs
The following post is by Dealbreaker reader and commenter Infinite Guest.
Laws go unenforced for any of several superficially distinct reasons, but ultimately because of political failure. Mostly a reiteration of desuetudinal laws, Dodd-Frank seems deliberately written so that it can’t be enforced. Dodd-Frank is a gigantic recipe for political failure. Read more »
Barney Frank is a pretty well-known Representative. But you know what? Some people just don’t keep up with the who’s who of Congress. Having said that, I’m pretty sure Mr. Frank did not go to the trouble of crafting this financial reform bill thing so that he could show up to various establishments (night-clubs, the supermarket, the ferry to Fire Island, what have you) and suffer the indignity of not only having to ask “Do you know who I am?” but have the answer be “No” and/or “I don’t care, sir.” Read more »
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