Spencer Bachus, who’s likely to be the new chairman of the House financial services committee, wants to go through the financial reform bill “page by page” and gut its toughest provisions, including the Volcker rule, which bans proprietary trading. The Financial Times explains:
Underlining the change in Congress, Mr Bachus, who as ranking Republican on the committee could replace Barney Frank as chairman of the panel,
expressed concern that shareholders of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase will be hurt because the banks will be less profitable.
Kudos for honesty, I guess. No shilly shallying here about how this is bad for consumers or bad for America or anything like that. It might hurt Goldman Sachs shareholders, so the Volcker Rule has to go.
This is one of the great political triumphs of our day. Right-wing opposition to healthcare reform I get. Liberals and conservatives have been fighting over national healthcare for a century. But opposition to modest banking reform? In the wake of the most catastrophic financial failure since the Great Depression? It’s mind boggling. Somehow, all those tea partiers who are mad as hell at Wall Street and aren’t going to take it anymore have been persuaded to believe that financial reform is a gigantic socialist/statist conspiracy to….what? I’m not even sure. But they’re mad about it and think Bachus is doing the Lord’s work by trying to repeal it. If you ever needed any evidence that the tea party movement is largely in thrall to all the usual Republican power centers, this is it. How else can you explain why a plumber in Dubuque is convinced that a bill to rein in Wall Street excesses is really a socialist ruse to allow Barack Obama to take over the banks?
Via Tyler Cowen, who has additional comments.
