AFR STATEMENT ON JP MORGAN TRADING LOSSES JP Morgan has just announced that it has taken some $2 billion in losses on its synthetic credit portfolio, with more losses likely in the near future. In case we needed yet another reminder of the need
Click here to view this week’s highlights and lowlights in Wall Street Reform – March 24, 2012 – March, 30, 2012. Please note: Compiling and distributing ‘This Week in Wall Street Reform’ will be in a period of transition in the coming weeks, so please bear
“The report was commissioned by Morgan Stanley, one of the big banks lobbying to ease the regulation. But IHS maintains its analysis, content and conclusions are entirely independent. …However, Americans for Financial Reform, an advocacy coalition supporting the legislation, took issue with the report. ‘This is just the latest in a series of industry-funded studies ordered up by financial market interests expressly to undermine the Volcker Rule,’ executive director Lisa Donner told CNBC in response to a question. ‘They don’t want to have to stop the profitable and risky proprietary trading that the Volcker rule bans, and they are grasping at straws to protect the status quo.’”
‘The regulators are under a lot of pressure,’ said Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform, an advocacy coalition that filed a comment letter urging that the draft rule be strengthened rather than watered down. Stanley, a former congressional aide, said that his side has at most a couple of dozen people working the agencies and Congress. Meantime, he said, hundreds of banking representatives are enlisting their customers by warning that the rule’s fallout will be higher costs and less-liquid markets.’
Click here to view this week’s highlights and lowlights in Wall Street Reform – March 17, 2012 – March 23, 2012.
“The Wall Street Journal has reported that the big banks are pressing Congress for a statutory delay in the implementation of the Volcker Rule. They claim that the fact that the law will become effective this July, possibly before all the rules are finalized, will lead to disruptions in our financial markets. But that’s simply not true. …his lobbying effort should be see for what it is — just another effort to undermine and negate the Volcker Rule so that Wall Street can continue proprietary speculation while taking advantage of the safety net taxpayers provide to the banking system.”
Click here to view this week’s highlights and lowlights in Wall Street Reform – March 10, 2012 – March 16, 2012.
“Public interest advocates in Washington want to turn former Goldman Sachs executive Greg Smith into their poster child for tough new rules for Wall Street. …Public Citizen and the AFL-CIO are part of a coalition, Americans for Financial Reform, that is pushing regulators to crack down on financial firms. “
“Echoing Volcker himself, Americans for Financial Reform said the rule is aimed ‘precisely’ at the problems Smith alleges, and should provide fighting power from a lobby movement to soften the rule. ‘It is crucial that regulators are not intimidated or overwhelmed by this well-funded effort, but instead move ahead to implement the Volcker Rule that Congress intended – a strong rule that truly changes the toxic culture of proprietary trading,’ the group said in a statement. ‘Smith’s statement today, along with the mountains of evidence from the financial crisis, demonstrates yet again how much we need a Volcker Rule that works.’”
“Advocates for tough implementation of financial reform are saying that a head-turning op-ed from a former employee of Goldman Sachs proves the need for strict rules on the financial sector. In a blistering piece published Wednesday by The New York Times, Greg Smith announced his resignation as an executive director at the firm, while offering a lengthy takedown of what it has become. He argued that under current leadership, Goldman had placed its own profit-hunting ahead of the well-being of its clients, who he said were called ‘muppets’ behind closed doors. …Americans for Financial Reform issued a statement saying Smith had ‘laid bare’ problems that ‘remain pervasive at our largest banks.’ The proper prescription? Tough implementation of the ‘Volcker Rule.’”