(Photo: Allison Bell/ALM)
Wall Street's long campaign to chip away at the toughest trading restriction imposed on banks after the financial crisis is finally paying off under President Donald Trump.
The Federal Reserve Board, now led by Trump appointees, is set to take the most concrete step yet to roll back the Volcker Rule, which was key to Washington's efforts to make the industry safer after the 2008 meltdown. The Fed's vote, scheduled for Wednesday, would kick off an administrative process aimed at significantly reducing compliance costs for financial firms.
The rule is meant to bar banks with federally-backed deposit insurance from suffering out-sized losses by restricting their ability to bet with their own capital. Financial firms have said the rule is unnecessarily complex and almost impossible to adhere to.
Trump-appointed regulators have shown a greater willingness to listen to such grievances, and are set to propose a revamp that would give banks more leeway to presume their trades comply with the rule.
"The objective behind this proposal is straightforward: simplifying and tailoring the Volcker rule in light of our experience with the rule in practice," said Randal Quarles, the Fed's point man on bank regulation. "This is a goal that is shared among all five agencies and among policymakers at those agencies with many different backgrounds."
Quarles, appointed by President Donald Trump, also stressed that the revisions weren't just a rollback by the new administration, saying they were "the fruit of long and shared experience" and not "assumptions of a few recently appointed individuals."
Over the next week, agencies including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are expected to also propose the changes. With legislative changes difficult to get through a politically divided Congress, regulators have been crucial to Trump's drive to dial back constraints like Volcker that impact the U.S.'s biggest banks.
Volcker, named for former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, banned what's known as proprietary trading — the practice of banks investing for their own benefit rather than buying or selling securities to fulfill requests from customers. It also restricted lenders from investing in hedge funds and private-equity firms.
The proposed changes, which would be opened up for public comment for 60 days, would "broadly simplify and tailor" the rule without negatively affecting the safety of banks, according to a summary of the plan.
