Around the Web: Volcker Rules - Not!

Until the morning of January 21, 82-year-old former Federal Reserve president Paul Volcker had been a lonely and largely ignored figure among President Obama’s economic advisers.

Volcker seemed to be the only one of Obama’s advisers not under the spell of the “too big to fail banks” and their highly touted innovations.

Volcker was especially vocal about protecting the public from the financial world’s riskier innovations. As he told a financial conference last year, “Riskier financial activities should be limited to hedge funds to whom society could say: ‘If you fail, fail. I'm not going to help you. Your stock is gone, creditors are at risk, but no one else is affected.’ ”

It was Volcker who had said that the only financial innovation to benefit consumers in the last 20 years was the ATM card.

But he wasn’t getting much traction with the president and his advisers.

Then the Democrats lost Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat.

In a lurch back toward the populism he had embraced during his campaign, President Obama hastily reached out for Volcker.

During a press conference, the president endorsed something he called the Volcker rule as an essential plank of his financial reform plan. That rule would restrict banks from risky proprietary trades with their own (borrowed) money.

Here’s what the president said:

“Banks will no longer be allowed to own, invest, or sponsor hedge funds, private equity funds, or proprietary trading operations for their own profit, unrelated to serving their customers.  If financial firms want to trade for profit, that's something they're free to do.  Indeed, doing so –- responsibly –- is a good thing for the markets and the economy.  But these firms should not be allowed to run these hedge funds and private equities funds while running a bank backed by the American people.”

For more on proprietary trading and the Volcker rule, read this from Rortybomb’s Mike Konczal and the NYT. For more about why the Volcker rule was a good idea, see this from WSJ’s Dealbreaker.

Obama mentioned the Volcker Rule a couple more times, as did the man who was marshaling financial reform through the House, Rep. Barney Frank.

But neither the president nor anybody else in the Democratic leadership ever mounted a public campaign to make it an essential part of reform. In fact, within a month, the president was already backing off his support of the Volcker rule.

And now, like many other parts of the reform that would have protected consumers and inconvenienced banks, it has been largely gutted.

Bloomberg reports “lobbying by banks and congressmen sympathetic to Wall Street’s views, as well as some administration members in the banks’ defense, trampled the views of Volcker and others who favored a stronger proposal.”

The weaker provisions won’t even go into effect for as many as 12 years.

It would have been one thing for Obama and the Democrats to go down swinging on the Volcker Rule. But they didn’t even put up much of a fight.

If you’re as disappointed as I am with the president’s lack of leadership on this, after he made such a big deal about it, why not let him know?

Less Kabuki, More Reform

Does the president get it yet on financial reform?

Or is his tougher stance toward the bankers part of a kabuki performed for the public while real reform is compromised away backstage?

The politics around the battle for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency are thick with intrigue and shifting positions.

A separate agency is a crucial aspect of any reform because the present regulators have done such a dismal job of protecting consumers’ interests.

We have every right to be suspicious of the president and the Democrats, based on their timidity in fighting for stronger regulation and holding accountable those responsible for the crisis.

The latest cause for doubts stems from the unsavory spectacle of Democrats and Republicans falling over themselves to reassure Wall Street that they are the bankers’ best bet to represent the interests of the financial industry.

Meanwhile, the president appears be jawboning the key Senate author of reform, Chris Dodd. A long-time recipient of Wall Street largesse, Dodd was facing a tough reelection campaign, based on some of his more unsavory dealings with Wall Street. In the midst of that campaign last November, he came out with a tough reform proposal, including an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

But as his campaign looked increasingly hopeless, Dodd decided to retire. Since then he’s been signaling that he wants to back off the independent consumer agency.  President Obama met with Dodd last month and insisted that the independent agency is “non-negotiable.”

President Obama has his own changing political calculations. He originally supported a milder version of bank reform passed by the House. After the Democrats lost Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat several weeks ago, the president all of a sudden decided to haul out his lone financial adviser who has advocated breaking up big banks, former Fed chief Paul Volcker. (Previously Obama had been ignoring him, letting a cast of Wall Street insiders run his handling of the banking crisis.)

Obama, with Volcker by his side, voiced support for breaking up the largest big banks as well as placing some new limits for some of the banks’ riskier activities.

Earlier this week at a Senate hearing, Dodd aimed unusual criticism at the president, questioning the timing of his announcement, labeling the president’s embrace of Volcker’s ideas “transparently political.”

Dodd didn’t stop there: he suggested that the president’s proposals to get tough on the big banks threatened the process of crafting a reform proposal that would get bipartisan support.

Key Republicans have already indicated what that would mean – no independent consumer financial protection agency, for one thing.

The Democrats are caught: The bankers who fund their campaigns are demanding watered-down reform that will ensure business as usual. Angry voters are demanding robust regulation and accountability.

The president has to demonstrate that his embrace of Volcker’s ideas isn’t just a gimmick. He’s got to flesh his proposals out with details and fight for them in public and not compromise them away in the back rooms.

Contact the president and let him know what you think. Let your senator know, too, that you’re tired of political theater. It’s past time for real reform.