A handful of protesters at Occupy Wall Street are doing what the authors of a complex piece of financial legislation may have hoped no one would do. They are reading it.
The legislation is a draft of the so-called Volcker rule, a 298-page regulatory document that came out of last year's Dodd-Frank financial reform act. As originally proposed by Paul Volcker, then chairman of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, the rule was aimed in part at preventing federally backed banks from making risky trades that could ultimately cost taxpayers. But in its current form, the Volcker rule is long, dense and -- critics fear -- full of language that affords banks a lot of wiggle room.
"It's a daunting document to look at," said Alexis Goldstein, a former financial sector employee who joined the Occupy protests a few weeks ago.
Yet Goldstein, 30, and a small party of fellow Occupiers are doing just that. The group, known asOccupy the SEC, has been reading through the Volcker rule line by line, flagging passages that seem to enable banks to skirt around regulatory intentions....Read the rest at The Huffington Post
'Occupy The SEC' Scrutinizes The Volcker Rule For Loopholes
by Alexander Eichler
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ReplyDeleteI thought the verdict was already in: the rule will be ineffective due to the reliance upon definitions.
ReplyDeleteThere are probably a lot more holes in that bill that haven't yet come to light. Looks like we'll see.
ReplyDelete#OWS is looking for more people to scrutinize the Volcker Rule.
ReplyDeleteJoin Occupy the SEC