Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, made a direct pitch to Congress yesterday in an effort to ensure that his proposed ban on proprietary trading by banks would survive legislative scrutiny.
Mr Volcker, whose ideas for splitting the banking industry received an unexpected endorsement from President Barack Obama last month, told the Senate banking committee in written testimony his initiative would help end the concept of “too big to fail”.
Under the so-called “Volcker rule”, riskier proprietary trading operations would be separated from more traditional banking. Groups that profit from in-house hedge funds, private equity firms or trading for their own account should not benefit from implicit or explicit government guarantees.