More evidence the Dodd-Frank reform law was an exercise in futility as Reuters reports Goldman Sachs may have already found a work around. Under the new law investment banks such as Goldman Sachs are supposed to be prohibited from making risky private equity investments under the Volcker Rule. But sources reveal that Goldman has simply [...]

Adding to the spate of delays on finalizing rules from the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, the final Volcker rule will probably not get finished until 2013. This is at least six months past due, as the original law called for a final Volcker rule in July. Five separate government agencies – the FDIC, the Federal [...]

Almost four months after the deadline passed on finalizing the Volcker rule, the firewall on most types of proprietary trading set up between investment and commercial banks, the regulators tasked with writing the rule are no closer to a resolution. The Treasury Department last promised that the rule would get written by the end of [...]

Standard and Poor’s estimates that the Volcker rule, due to be finalized at the end of the year, will eliminate $10 billion from bank profits annually. This is a sharp increase in the perception of the Volcker rule’s impact, and it comes before the extent of the rule is even known. “We currently estimate that [...]

Via Mark Gongloff, the IMF has released a new study showing that, in essence, the world would be a much safer place if international banks stopped trading in the financial markets. Why can’t banks just trade like George Soros and everybody else? Why can’t they have any fun? A few reasons: First, banks have tons [...]

Whither the Volcker rule? After a flurry of discussion about it in the wake of JPMorgan Chase’s Fail Whale trades, we’ve heard significantly less of late. In fact, regulators blew through a July deadline on finalizing the Volcker rule. The last word we had was that the deadline was pushed back to the end of [...]

After JPMorgan Chase revealed their Fail Whale trades, there was a debate over whether those trades would have been stopped by the Volcker rule, which was supposed to prevent proprietary trading by the mega-banks. Jamie Dimon called the trade a hedge, the authors of the Volcker rule disagreed with him, they leaned on the regulators [...]

So here’s me and William Cohan on yesterday’s The Alyona Show talking about that Jamie Dimon testimony yesterday. I have to admit a little shock at the focus of the coverage on the captured Congress and the relative soft pitches lobbed in Dimon’s direction. I’m wondering what people expected. This wasn’t the Senate Permanent Subcommittee [...]

I certainly recognize that the so-called “grilling” of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon today was more like a pillow fight, with more Senators asking Dimon’s opinion on things than trying to get to the bottom of what happened at the Chief Investment Office. I don’t know what people expected. For all intents and purposes, members [...]

I don’t think it was too much of a surprise that today’s hearing with Jamie Dimon was something less than stringent. Very few Senators bothered to show up with anything more than a list of questions and a pallid expression. The very structure of the hearing, with one round of five minutes of questioning, wasn’t [...]

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon faces the Senate Banking Committee in a two-hour hearing scheduled for 10am ET today. He’ll be the only witness. Keep in mind that Dimon’s JPMorgan Chase has given millions to top-ranking members of the Banking Committee, so anything more than headline-grabbing and grandstanding without a real challenge to Dimon in [...]