U.S. Regulators to Defend Volcker Rule Ban on Proprietary Trades – Phil Mattingly and Cheyenne Hopkins (Bloomberg)
January 17, 2012

“U.S. House Republicans will press federal regulators on the merits of a proposal to ban banks from trading for their own account, as one regulator acknowledged the rule could put banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. at a competitive disadvantage.  …Consumer groups and supporters of the rule have leaned on regulators to stick to the implementation timeline and pushed back against assertions that the rule will damage capital markets.  The arguments from financial firms ‘are all founded on the irrational assumption that, once bank proprietary trading ceases under the Volcker Rule, others will not expand to meet demand,’ Wallace C. Turbeville, a former Goldman Sachs banker, said in testimony prepared for the hearing on behalf of Americans for Financial Reform, an umbrella organization made up of consumer groups, labor unions and civil rights law firms.”  Click here for more.