Former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker met in person with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro this week to discuss the proposed ban on proprietary trading named for him, according to a person familiar with the meeting.
Volcker, 84, has been a prominent advocate for the ban, which he asserts would curb the kind of risky trading that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis.
“Proprietary trading of financial instruments -- essentially speculative in nature -- engaged in primarily for the benefit of limited groups of highly paid employees and of stockholders does not justify the taxpayer subsidy implicit in routine access to Federal Reserve credit, deposit insurance or emergency support,” Volcker wrote in a commentary submitted to regulators Feb. 13th.
This Bloomberg story was posted on their website yesterday afternoon...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending it along. It's certainly worth the read...and the link is here.
