Free Republic

ThereÂ’s a sense that the bureaucrats who command the federal leviathan work for themselves, not for the country at large. That wasnÂ’t true of Paul Volcker. Since his death last week, Paul Volcker has been heavily eulogized. ThatÂ’s not the purpose here. In these trying times, AmericansÂ’ faith in our nationÂ’s institutions is at historic lows. Once-vaunted organizations like the FBI now struggle to command a majority of AmericansÂ’ support.The causes for this are legion. But there is a general sense that the vast federal appendages created in the last 100 years have little connection to the interests of...

[Volcker's] obituaries were disappointing for them almost uniformly promoting the fiction of Volcker as inflation slayer. Such a view doesn’t square with simple economic history. Indeed, explicit in the accepted wisdom that Volcker was “inflation’s worst enemy” (Hoover Institution’s John Taylor) is that economic growth causes inflation. As Phillips Curve devotee Neil Irwin put it in the New York Times, Volcker allegedly beat inflation “at the cost of what would become the worst recession in the seven decades between the Great Depression and the global financial crisis.” In the analysis of seemingly everyone, job loss and greatly reduced prosperity were...

Paul A. Volcker, who helped shape American economic policy for more than six decades, most notably by leading the Federal Reserve’s brute-force campaign to subdue inflation in the late 1970s and early ’80s, died on Sunday in New York. He was 92. The death was confirmed by his daughter, Janice Zima, who did not specify the cause. Mr. Volcker had been treated for prostate cancer, which was diagnosed in 2018. Mr. Volcker, a towering, taciturn and somewhat rumpled figure, arrived in Washington as America’s postwar economic hegemony was beginning to crumble. He would devote his professional life to wrestling with...

Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Carter and Reagan who later played a role in the Obama administration's response to the financial crisis of 2009, has died at the age of 92. Multiple media outlets reported that Volcker, who raised interest rates as the Fed's chief to combat inflation, had died. In the Obama years, Volcker reemerged to tout a rule, eventually called the Volcker rule, that put tougher constraints on big banks.

What is the topic that dominates today conversations in financial circles? “It isn’t Greece, or the U.S. economy, or China…It is the lack of liquidity in the markets and what this might mean for the world economy—and their businesses. Market veterans say they have never experienced anything like it.

Stock prices were slumping in early December, for good reasons, including global economic weakness. But they have surged ever since the Fed stated its intention not to raise rates in the near term. The challenge for the Fed is to hold rates low without inflating bubbles. The way to do so is to control speculation through stepped-up regulation of banks and other financial institutions. Instead, the Fed has been inclined to ease up on regulation. On Dec. 19, it delayed a core provision of the Volcker Rule, a part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law that bans speculative trading...

Finance: JPMorgan Chase's surprise $2 billion trading loss brought immediate calls from Washington for still more regulation. But if anything, this shows the costly Dodd-Frank financial regulation has solved nothing. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been a loud critic of the Dodd-Frank financial law — particularly the Volcker Rule, which limits banks' investments for their own accounts. So no doubt there was some high-fiving in Washington over his bank's $2 billion trading loss. Dimon was blunt in his own assessment, calling his bank's trading strategy "flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored." "We will admit it, we...

That’s why a recent speech by Paul A. Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve and a voice of reason on matters financial, is so timely and important. Presented last month to the Group of 30, an organization devoted to international economic issues, the speech outlined crucial work that still must be done to safeguard our financial future. “Three Years Later: Unfinished Business in Financial Reform” was the title. “By now it is pretty clear that it was faith in the techniques of modern finance, stoked in part by the apparent huge financial rewards, that enabled the extremes of...

Banking: Regulators have unveiled their long-awaited plan to limit the risk taken by U.S. banks. But the so-called Volcker Rule is a nightmarish piece of financial legislation that fixes nothing and may create another crisis. When in doubt, regulate. That might be the motto of the current White House. It certainly describes the latest dictum to spring out of the egregious Dodd-Frank financial reforms. The Volcker rule, named for former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, aims to avoid another financial meltdown like the one that devastated Wall Street from 2007 to 2009. It does so by barring banks from making short-term...

BEVERLY HILLS, California (Reuters) - Financial services executives are apprehensively watching regulation reform make its way through Washington, worried measures such as a bailout fund and restrictions on derivatives would hurt business. But executives, investors and advisers at the Milken Institute'sGlobal Conference agreed on the need for reform of financial regulation to prevent crises in the future. "We need a bipartisan bill here because we need both sides to contribute their best ideas to this reform. And we need reform," said Kenneth Griffin, the chief executive of hedge fund Citadel Investment Group. "It will hurt business if we end up...

I've been a customer of USAA services my entire adult life. It has been one company that has always kept faith, gave excellent service. Now it's threatened by the Volcker rule.

The best that can be said for Barack Obama’s latest plan for financial regulation – banning deposit-taking banks from proprietary trading and capping financial groups’ market share of funding – is that it shows he now sees only radical policies can crisis-proof the financial system. But the claim that these ones will increase stability is misguided, if not misleading.Being cut off from trading securities for their own book will not stop banks from putting insured deposits at risk. Their inventiveness in finding ways to lose money knows no bounds, and the most time-honoured money-loser of all – making bad loans...