AFR sent a letter to members of Congress, urging them to oppose HR 4167. If enacted, this legislation would advance the interests of a few Wall Street mega-banks in weakening implementation of the Volcker Rule ban on proprietary trading.
AFR sent a letter to members of Congress, urging them to oppose HR 4167, which would exempt almost all collateralized loan obligations issued before January 14th from Volcker rule restrictions on bank sponsorship of external funds, allowing banks to continue to hold these instruments. Because managers of CLOs can buy and sell assets this would create a major loophole in Volcker rule prohibitions on proprietary trading.
“Though small compared to Wall Street and the right, groups like Americans for Financial Reform and Better Markets show up extensively in the comments on the Volcker Rule. In the final rule, there are hundreds of references to the detailed comment letter the Occupy the SEC group sent…” The work of these outside groups “is a major piece of what makes solid final rules happen.”
“The strength of the rule is the scope of the compliance regime,’ said Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform. “The regulators correctly realized that most proprietary trading is hidden within supposedly innocent activities like hedging or market making.”
“After years of consideration, the five agencies charged with implementing the Volcker Rule have reached agreement. This is an important step forward in financial reform. The final rule reflects hard work by champions of the rule within the regulatory agencies, the Administration, Congress, and the public-interest community… [But] today’s approval is only one step toward realizing the promise of the Volcker Rule.”
With too many in Washington once again echoing the “What’s good for us is good for America” mantra of Wall Street, the Senate’s new findings should shred any argument for retreat from key reforms.
Two and a half years after passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, two-thirds of its mandated rules have yet to be issued, and more than a hundred of its deadlines have been missed, writes Mark Gongloff of the Huffington Post. “Meanwhile, no banker has yet gone
AFR urges regulators to strengthen their original proposal and not to be swayed by exaggerated industry concerns about market liquidity.
Senators Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) have appealed to regulators to finish work on the Volcker Rule, which was meant to prevent banks from engaging in hedge-fund style trading. That basic principle has been “the law of the land for over two years,”
In a little noted speech to his constituents in May, Paul Ryan decried the “crony capitalism” that he said, prompted the big bank bail-outs of 2008 (though he himself voted for the TARP, and he himself gets massive campaign contributions from big financial firms).