Five former Treasury Secretaries, from Democratic and Republican administrations alike, voiced their support for the “Volcker Rule” on Sunday in a joint letter to the Wall Street Journal. The secretaries—Michael Blumenthal, Paul O’Neill, George Shultz, Nicholas Brady, and John Snow—said the rule, which would separate banks’ riskier trading operations like hedge funds from their more staid commercial banking duties—wrote that “Banks benefiting from public support by means of access to the Federal Reserve and FDIC insurance should not engage in essentially speculative activity unrelated to essential bank services.”
The former secretaries’ support adds momentum behind the proposed regulation, offered by former Federal Reserve chairman and Obama ally Paul Volcker, going into a week when the Senate, led by banking committee chair Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), plans to unveil its version of comprehensive financial reform. (The House’s version of financial reform, passed in December, gives the Treasury and the president the power to divest assets from banks if necessary.) Broadly speaking, the Volcker Rule is supported by Congressional Democrats involved in financial reform as well as many finance experts. Despite the massive amounts of speculation that fueled the economic meltdown, large financial institutions generally say they’re more than capable of policing their own risky trading operations, and don’t see the need to split those hedge funds and private equity funds from their rest of their company. We’ll see sometime this week whether Dodd and Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), Dodd’s latest partner in financial-reform talks, decide to include the Volcker Rule in their plans.