Curious how much the various banks who stood to be impacted by or, otherwise, benefit from either a concentration or dilution of the Volcker rule? According to OpenSecrets, which crunched the numbers, here is how much being able to continue prop trading meant to some of the largest US banks and lobby groups:
- American Bankers Association: $6.495 million
- JPMorgan: $4 million
- Wells Fargo: $4.440 million
- Citigroup: $4.240 million
- Independent Community Bankers of America: $3.581 million
- Bank of America: $2 million
Not bad considering the loophole-ridden Volcker Rule will effectively permit “hedge” books (where an army of lawyers paid $1000/hour defines just what a hedge is) to continue piling on billions of dollars in wildly profitable, Fed reserve funded trades.
From OpenSecrets:
Regulators approved the Volcker rule yesterday, a central piece of the Dodd-Frank bill that limits the ability of banks to engage in high-risk trading. Their decision comes in spite of heavy lobbying from the rule’s main opponents: the banks themselves.
The American Bankers Association, which represents the interests of banks of all sizes, spent nearly $6.5 million on lobbying in the first nine months of 2013, with much of that money going to lobbying on behalf of “Dodd-Frank issues.” Wells Fargo and Citigroup each spent just over $4 million, while the Independent Community Bankers of America, another organization that represents banks, spent nearly $3.6 million. All three lobbied on the Dodd-Frank legislation.
Bank of America, meanwhile, spent just under $2 million on the Volcker rule and other issues, while JPMorgan Chase spent more than $4 million and listed “implementation and interpretation of the Volcker Rule” as one of its concerns.
The final rule is seen as a defeat for the commercial banking industry, which has already voiced its unhappiness with the decision.
Congrats on the math, alas completely flawed conclusion: obviously the banks wouldn’t spend tens of millions not to achieve their goal, which they have – cover up a Rule which is only superficially named for Paul Volcker (even he admitted he had zero contribution in its drafting), and which was almost certainly penned by the banking lobby, in a way that allows banks to continue their prop trading status quo, only this time with the implicit blessing of the government. And since everyone knows how this movie ends, can we just please fast forward to the bit where one after another bank has to once again be bailed out on the taxpayer dime.
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/RUfOwuh3fXg/story01.htm Tyler Durden