PRESS RELEASE
The Empire Has No Clothes: Fed Delays Volcker Rule Again till July 2017
Dec. 19, 2014 (EIRNS)—Wall Street is in desperate straits, and the mad speculators got another free pass from the Federal Reserve on Dec. 18th with a decision to not implement the Volcker Rule section of the Dodd-Frank bill for two more years, until July 2017. The rule, which had been written by outgoing Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) as a fraudulent substitute for Glass-Steagall, already gave the banks five years to sell off proprietary trading desk portfolios (i.e., their own in-house derivatives and hedge fund creations), and that deadline was already extended once before, to July 2015. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Fed granted an additional two-year delay of the rule. The reason for this blatant Christmas present to Wall Street is clear: Wall Street and the whole international finance system are bankrupt.
This only underlines the reality that there is no alternative except reinstating Glass-Steagall and implementing Lyndon LaRouche’s Four Cardinal Laws. Members of Congress immediately denounced this move, coming right on top of the repeal of the anti-derivatives Section 716 of the useless and fraudulent Dodd Frank bill.
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), one of the co-sponsors of the House bill to re-instate Glass-Steagall, slammed the Fed decision with a warning that we are at risk of a Wall Street meltdown worse than 2008, or even worse than 1929.
"Every day—every single day—we are at risk of a market meltdown that would wreck our economy even worse than the 2008 crash did, or even than the 1929 crash did,"
Alan Grayson said to the Huffington Post’s Zach Carter.
"Six years after the fact, we have taken no significant action to reduce the Wall Street gambling or ’too big to fail’ concentration that caused the 2008 crash. If we can’t even implement the Volcker Rule, an extremely modest effort to stave off total disaster, then total disaster is exactly what we can expect."
Sen. Jeff Merkley put out a statement on his website saying,
"The Wall Street Casino is alive and well. Last week it was Congress granting the big banks the right to keep trading on banned risky derivatives with government backing. Today it is the Fed granting big banks two more years to make big bets through direct ownership of private equity and hedge funds. It all amounts to the same thing—spineless accommodation of the big banks’ desire to run taxpayer-subsidized hedge funds. This is wrong for taxpayers and it is wrong for the stability of our banking system."
