Free Republic

The Federal Reserve voted Wednesday to seek input on a proposal to simplify the Volcker Rule, a provision of the post-financial crisis reform law that blocked banks from trading on their own accounts. The proposed alterations would tailor compliance based on the size of a firm's trading assets, benefiting smaller institutions; clarify that firms trading within internal risk limits are conducting permissible market-making or underwriting activity; and limit the rule's impact on foreign activities of foreign banks. The Fed will accept comments for the next two months, a key step toward final adoption and implementation of the changes drafted by...

CHICAGO – Three years have now passed since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which triggered the start of the most acute phase of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Is the financial world a safer place today? Within days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the US had erected new and enormous security measures at airports throughout the country. Within a month, the US military was on the ground in Afghanistan. Within three years the US had an official report on the causes of the events of 9/11; the well-resourced expert commission that produced it identified the weaknesses of America’s national-security...

U.S. Takes Aim at Proprietary Trading, But Just What is It?; 'the Volcker Rule' The showdown over the future of proprietary trading by U.S. banks is about to begin. One likely fight: defining exactly what proprietary trading is.Wall Street has been hungry for details ever since President Barack Obama proposed curbs last month that would limit the ways banks with insured deposits bet with their own capital. Some answers will emerge Tuesday at a Senate Banking Committee hearing where former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker is set to testify."There is a broad distinction between proprietary trading and responding to a...