Wall Street banks and brokerage firms hate the Volker rule, and so they weren’t terribly pleased when Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, added it to his financial reform bill yesterday.
But the bill didn’t receive any Republican support, leading to the widespread belief that the Volker rule won’t pass anyway. The rule, named for former Fed Chairman Paul Volker, would restrict banks from trading activities that profit only the firm and not customers.
But now it appears Bob Corker – a high-ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, isn’t so against Volker as Wall Street might have hoped. According to the Wall Street Journal, Corker he wants to know if so-called prop trading creates conflicts of interest. If it does, he’s all for banning the practice.
