Volcker Rule to Get Vote

Better late than never. The hotly debated, so-called Volcker Rule, which would ban banks from trading for itself (proprietary trading) and place restrictions on investments in hedge funds, will get a vote next week say federal officials. The rule, which was part of the financial reform bill known as Dodd-Frank that passed in 2010, will be voted on by five agencies after a tentative agreement has been reached. The five agencies are the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The Volcker Rule, named for the former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, has been strongly contested in Washington, as major banks and lobbying firms fought against its implementation, and at one point the regulation alone stood at over 1,000 pages.