https://wccftech.com/volcker-rule-rollback-inbound-return-of-the-traders-and-too-big-to-fail/

It wasn’t so long ago that I wrote about the possibility of the Volcker Rule being rewritten and essentially watered down (here). Now we start to see some of the first shoots from those seeds as the Fed published yesterday its initial proposal (approved unanimously by the Fed’s 3 member board) to simplify restrictions on proprietary trading by banks. This comes among a raft of US financial regulatory loosening, including the recent reclassification of banks for the main Dodd-Frank piece of flagship legislation the US passed in the wake of the 2007-08 financial crisis.

Some of the changes to Dodd-Frank were probably overdue. Regulatory compliance can be an expensive and time-consuming affair. Smaller institutions had struggled with it since its introduction and in many cases arguments were appropriately made that the burden of compliance was too heavy on institutions which shouldn’t particularly have been targeted. However the Volcker Rule is a different beast altogether. Specifically designed to try to stop the riskiest activities of investment banks being undertaken with federally insured deposits and thus from putting the taxpayer on the hook for bailouts which are avoidable if the banks behave themselves.