Proprietary trading- a fantastic way for banks to take both sides of trades and a way that they had utilized to make profits for themselves has been stopped in the United States. After bailouts tacking hundreds of billions onto the government’s balance sheet, and after public debt increased substantially because of those bailouts, banks can no longer take risky bets as part of their operations. Individual traders are saddened as the job called “trader” now has become more limited in its applicability than ever. But congress and President Obama were fans of the Volcker rule-pushing (often risky) proprietary trading out of banks.
Now the European Commission has come on board engaging their own version of the Volcker rule, essentially prohibiting banks from engaging in proprietary trading. According to Bloomberg, the European commissioner Mr. Barnier received criticism equally harsh on both sides of the table. Fortunately he expected and interpreted “an equal and opposite anger as a good sign.” He notes, “I’m not surprised by these reactions. When I put them all on the table…I tell myself we have found an equilibrium.”
While European-style socialism with its upwards of 60% taxation was once a foreign concept, rising public debt (to be managed by rising taxes) brings us closer to Europe’s policies, even as the EU now adopts the US’s Volcker rule.
Image: Newsworks.org