Fed Board to Meet Next Week to Propose Overhaul of Volcker Rule
Fed Board to Meet Next Week to Propose Overhaul of Volcker Rule
(Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve will meet next week to discuss changes to the Volcker rule, the first step in its effort to overhaul one of Wall Street’s most-hated regulations.
The Fed’s Board of Governors said in a statement Wednesday that it will hold a public meeting May 30 to discuss a proposal to modify the 2013 rule, which sought to limit excessive risk-taking at banks by restricting speculative trading. Regulators including the Fed, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission have been working on the plan for months.
The revamp, known within agencies as Volcker 2.0, is the latest effort by financial regulators to soften rules that the Trump administration blames for holding back economic growth. Volcker, one of the most sweeping demands that followed the 2008 financial crisis, banned banks from trading purely for their own benefit.
The proposal is likely to eliminate some requirements that firms document their hedges and the market positions they’re tied to and scrap a presumption in Volcker that all short-term trading violates the rule, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month. The agencies are also likely to make it easier for lenders to stockpile assets that their customers might want to buy in the near term.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Bain in Washington at bbain2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jesse Westbrook at jwestbrook1@bloomberg.net, Alexis Leondis
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