Killing Volcker rule: Heads the banks win, tails the taxpayers lose

[MrCoffee]

In the continuing saga of "They Got Away With It," the Volcker rule is in danger of being undone by the complexity larded onto it by the bank lobby. As the New York Times reports, the goal of prohibiting taxpayer-backed banks from trading on their own accounts, instead became something where "bank lobbyists with complicit regulators and legislators took a simple concept and bloated it into a 530-page monstrosity of hopeless complexity and vagueness."

The report goes on:

They couldn't kill the rule. Instead, they are getting Congress and regulators to render it morbidly obese and bedridden. Of course, that is no accident. The biggest banks, which are in business today only because taxpayers bailed them out, want to protect their valuable franchises.

So much for the supposed power of Occupy Wall Street. It's nothing compared with the more than $400 million the banking industry spent on lobbying last year. This is your money, by the way, via the bailout of the "financial services" sector in the wake of the collapse its risky swindles brought on in 2008.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/soundeconomywithjontalton/2017577372_killing_volcker_heads_the_bank.html

Le sigh...

[DirkGently]

1. Sure. Banks are "constituents." People are "protesters blocking the intersection."