RC Whalen
Zero Hedge
January 25, 2010
 |
|
 |
|
| The difference between the world when Volcker was Fed chairman and today is the end of Glass Steagall. | |
We posted a revised and longer version of the post last week on the Volcker Rule on The IRA web site last night. The comments are mostly positive but also surprising because so few people know even the most recent history of the Fed and its key players. You can read the comment by hitting this link.
Most people don’t know, for example, that Chairman Volcker was the intellectual author of “Too Big To Fail.” Volcker had a career at Chase before becoming a so-called regulator. He always saw the world from the POV of a badly-run TBTF bank and Chase pre-JPM was certainly badly run.
[efoods]The difference between the world when Volcker was Fed chairman and today is the end of Glass Steagall. Instead of bailing out simple lenders, the Fed now faces the task of managing and saving giant securities and securitization platforms that are too big to manage in a rational fashion. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that JPM chief Jamie Dimon or any CEO of a TBTF bank has the slightest idea what is really happening within their enterprise.
To be clear, I don’t think Paul Volcker is influenced by anybody, but he has not changed either. Paul was always willing to bend the rules for the large banks and empowered my old boss Gerry Corrigan to institutionalize the practice. As one of my friends in TX said last night, ““bending” for the old big banks under Glass Stegal and dealing with the monsters we have today are the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad.” Ditto.
Corrigan was the author of the doctrines of “Banks Are Special” and “Constructive Ambiguity.” He was head of the International Supervision Committee for the Fed but left before his term was up under misterious circumstances with overtones of regulatory failures involving BNL and BCCI.
One rumor I heard at the time was that the Fed tipped off BNL so that the examinations would turn up nothing. It was another example of the Fed’s failure as a regulator. And then there is the fiasco with BNP and the Iraq “Oil for Food” program, when the Fed again dropped the ball and literally looked the other way.
The Emergency Election Sale is now live! Get 30% to 60% off our most popular products today!