The Volcker Rule -aka the euthanasia principle- got some fresh backers over the weekend, with five former Treasury secretaries sending a letter to the WSJ to voice their support. While this must be good news (late wedding gift?) for Paul, the former secretaries don’t add much to the initial argument. They’re just reiterating what Paul’s been saying from the start: This is just one component of a much broader picture, banks should not engage in speculative activity unrelated to essential bank services, prop trading is a bad, bad, thing. Right. Doesn’t do much to convince the haters.
In other news, today is National Margarita Day.
Volcker Rule
Got to give it up for Volcker, who, despite growing uproar against his proposed eponymous rule, is soldiering on, saying it’s the best thing that ever happened since well, ever. Volcker is however getting increasingly frustrated and said he is “very disturbed” by the level of dysfunction in Capitol Hill and the Senate, and basically, WTF is going on with these people who can’t get things done?
In a CNN interview yesterday, Volcker said that regulators screw up big time in the years leading to the crisis, as a) they weren’t “on top” of anything and b) they didn’t understand what was going on anyway, relying on “somebody down in the bowels had it under control.” Also financial innovation sucks. The only innovation that has added value recently, is the ATM machine.
The Volcker Rule was at the core of many fights last week at Davos. As we wrote, bankers couldn’t agree with each other, lawmakers couldn’t agree either, but still decided to band up against bankers, blah, blah.
Anyway, seems like there wasn’t a lack of booze, as we initially thought, and on the last day of the WEF conference, everybody decided to give it a rest and just find somewhat of an agreement while getting trashed. The fighting was getting old, they were too hungover to continue this BS and they all had come to party after all.
Now, you can think what you want about the Obama proposals, but there is something I find more than strange. What is happening about what caused the crisis in the first place and why is there no mention of it anywhere anymore in none on of the proposals?
Maybe I missed something here, and maybe someone can help me understand, but as far as I can remember, what was at the root of the problem, were OTC derivatives and securitized products based on bad loans. Oh wait, we did have a program to solve that and relieve banks from those “toxic assets” off their balance sheets: the Troubled Asset Relief Program, our beloved TARP. We kinda strayed away from its original intent, no?
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