2013.12.11 沃尔克规则

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Paul Volcker: First He Challenged Obama, Then He Changed Wall Street
How the former Fed Chair and Gary Gensler created the "Volcker Rule."

By Michael Hirsh and National Journal
DECEMBER 11, 2013


Reuters
As 2009 rolled on and the panic receded, Paul Volcker felt there was something very wrong with the Obama administration's plans for reforming Wall Street. But no one was listening to him. The gruff-voiced, cigar-chomping former Fed chairman may have been nominally a member of the Obama team—chairman of the president's new Economic Recovery Advisory Board—as well as a living legend of finance, the conquerer of runaway inflation in the '70s.


But the then-82-year-old Volcker found that his rep wasn't getting him anywhere with the president's inner circle, especially Obama's bank-friendly Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, and chief economic advisor Larry Summers, both of whom had little time for him. In an interview in late 2009, Volcker said he felt somewhat used early on by Obama (whom he had publicly backed for president)--merely trotted out for the cameras during the presidential campaign, but then sidelined when the real decisions were being made. "When the economy began going sour, then they decided I could be some kind of symbol of responsibility and prudence of their economic policy," he said with a sour smile.


What bothered Volcker was very simple: After hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts, he was appalled that the biggest banks—which Obama allowed to remain intact despite having caused the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression—had been permitted to resume their pre-crisis habits of behaving like hedge funds, trading recklessly with taxpayer-guaranteed money. Volcker wanted a rule that would bar commercial banks from indulging in "proprietary" trading (in other words, gambling for the firm's own gain), thus cordoning off federally guaranteed bank deposits and Federal Reserve lending from the heaviest risk-taking on the Street. It was the closest thing he could get to a return of Glass-Steagall, the 1933 law that forced big banks like J.P. Morgan to spin off their riskier investment banking sides into new firms (in that case, Morgan Stanley) after the Crash that led to the Depression.


Commercial banks that lie at the heart of the economy and are able to draw cheap money from the Fed discount window "shouldn't be doing risky capital market stuff," Volcker told me. "I don't want them to be Goldman Sachs, running a zillion proprietary operations." But the president "obviously decided not to accept" his recommendations, Volcker said then.

Channeling the views of Wall Street, Geithner and Summers thought Volcker's proposals were not feasible: How was anybody supposed to know when a trade was "proprietary" as opposed to a legitimate hedging or "market-making" transaction for clients. Just couldn't work, they said. And so Volcker began traveling all over the country to deliver a series of speeches pushing for even more fundamental reform of the financial system—parting ways with both the Obama administration and most of the Congress.

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By late 2009 and early 2010—especially after the stunning special Senate election result in Massachusetts gave the once-Democratic seat to a Republican, Scott Brown—Obama began to think that his administration looked vulnerable on the issue. According to a senior administration official involved in economic policy-making, the president came to believe that Geithner and Summers hadn't gone far enough with financial reform. They had, in fact, resisted almost every structural change to Wall Street, not only Volcker's plan but also Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln's idea to bar banks from swaps trading.

And Wall Street didn't seem to be changing on its own: In December 2009, the president was outraged to hear that year-end bonuses would actually be larger in 2009 than they had been in 2007, the year prior to the catastrophe. "Wait, let me get this straight," Obama said at a White House meeting. "These guys are reserving record bonuses because they're profitable, and they're profitable only because we rescued them." And so at a meeting late that year in the Roosevelt Room, Obama said: "I'm not convinced Volcker's not right about this." Vice President Joe Biden, a longtime fan of Volcker's, bluntly piped up: "I'm quite convinced Volcker is right about this!"

Obama formally proposed the rule at a White House news conference on Jan. 21, 2010 with Volcker in rare attendance, announcing: "We're calling it the Volcker Rule after the tall guy behind me." Senators Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Carl Levin, D-Mich, later formally introduced the rule into the Dodd-Frank law. But even then Geithner dragged his feet on implementation, and for the next two and a half years Wall Street lawyers loaded the proposal down with loopholes and exemptions.


The Volcker Rule was, in fact, in grave danger of being loopholed to death right up until its adoption this week. And in the end it was largely one regulator, more than any other, stood firm against those efforts and managed to avert the worst of the watering down: Gary Gensler, the outgoing chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. As diminutive in stature as Volcker is towering, Gensler was the Jeff to Volcker's Mutt, an essential part of a de facto team.

Like Volcker, the 56-year-old Gensler was also something of a relic from an earlier era, not necessarily the person you would expect to be taking on Wall Street in the second decade of the 21st century. Serving under Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in the '90s, Gensler had helped to open the way to massive deregulation of the banks, ultimately leading to the subprime mortgage crisis. As a result, progressive senators such as Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., even put on a hold on his CFTC nomination at first. But in testimony and later on in interviews, Gensler became one of the very few former Clinton or Bush administration officials to admit his errors of judgment in freeing up finance in the '90s. And as CFTC chief, he sought to make right what had gone so terribly wrong.

It was Gensler, using the unmatched expertise he had developed in the previous three years cracking down on over-the-counter derivatives trading--which is the main source of the banks' proprietary profits--who mainly led the charge to toughen the Volcker Rule and extend it worldwide, especially when it became clear that banks could evade it by shifting trading to their overseas operations, by several accounts. Along with Securities and Exchange Commissioner Kara Stein, he was also the key player behind a critical provision that places the burden of proof on the banks to justify that activities they are engaged in are not proprietary trading, forcing them to provide a regular analysis correlating such trades to appropriate hedges or other approved activities. Giving additional teeth to the rule, Gensler and the other regulators also forced the banks to restrict their hedging to specific identifiable investments and ban so-called portfolio hedging--which had allowed the banks to engage in complicated trades putatively to hedge against general risks across a broad portfolio of investments. Gensler held up as a cautionary tale the notorious "London Whale" episode, when even a blue-chip bank like JPMorgan was found to be making derivative bets that cost $6.2 billion in losses and masking them as a portfolio hedge. Gensler "went to the mat on that issue," says Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland regulatory expert and a sometime advisor to the CFTC.


By taking the baton from Volcker, and pushing almost alone to regulate trillions in derivatives trades overseas, Gensler initially earned himself enemies in the Treasury Department and White House, especially when European and Asian governments began complaining about his efforts to extend his purview to U.S. banks' overseas activities. Helped by in the end by Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, who proved much more eager to endorse his efforts than Geithner had been, Gensler won over less enthusiastic regulators. In a recent speech that could almost have been written by Gensler, Lew praised the rule as "true to President Obama's vision" and echoed Gensler in saying that it was intended to prohibit "risky trading bets like the 'London Whale' that are masked as risk-mitigating hedges."

Now, with little fanfare, Gensler is on his way out at the CFTC—perhaps the most unsung hero of the entire post-financial crisis period—and the effectiveness of the Volcker Rule remains to be seen, especially since regulators have put off implementation until 2015. The banks will no doubt sue to change it further. But even some skeptics of Dodd-Frank think it could be the biggest breakthrough yet against the concentrated power of Wall Street banks. It "will not end all gambling activities on Wall Street, but should limit them and reduce the risk to Main Street," Dennis Kelleher, the head of the advocacy group Better Markets, said in a statement. Thanks largely to the odd couple of Paul Volcker and Gary Gensler, the rule may yet prove to be the single most effective solution to the too-big-to-fail problem.

Michael Hirsh is chief correspondent for National Journal.



保罗-沃尔克。他首先挑战了欧巴马，然后改变了华尔街
这位前美联储主席和加里-根斯勒如何创造了 "沃尔克规则"。

迈克尔-希尔什和《国家期刊》报道
2013年12月11日

随着2009年的推移和恐慌的消退，保罗-沃尔克觉得奥巴马政府改革华尔街的计划有很大问题。但没有人听他的话。这位声音粗犷、叼着雪茄的前美联储主席可能在名义上是奥巴马团队的成员--总统新成立的经济复苏咨询委员会的主席，同时也是金融界的一个活生生的传奇人物，是70年代失控通货膨胀的征服者。


但当时82岁的沃尔克发现，他的代表身份并没有让他在总统的核心圈子里得到任何好处，特别是奥巴马对银行友好的财政部长蒂姆-盖特纳和首席经济顾问拉里-萨默斯，这两人都没有什么时间给他。在2009年底的一次采访中，沃尔克说，他觉得自己在早期被奥巴马（他曾公开支持奥巴马竞选总统）利用了 -- 在总统竞选期间，他只是在镜头前出场，但在做出真正的决定时却被排挤。"当经济开始走下坡路时，他们决定我可以成为他们经济政策的某种责任和谨慎的象征，"他带着酸楚的微笑说。


困扰沃尔克的事情非常简单。在纳税人提供了数千亿美元的救助后，他感到震惊的是，最大的银行--尽管它们造成了大萧条以来最严重的金融危机，但奥巴马仍允许它们保持原状--被允许恢复危机前的习惯，像对冲基金一样，用纳税人担保的钱不计后果地交易。沃尔克希望制定一项规则，禁止商业银行沉迷于 "自营 "交易（换句话说，为公司自身利益而赌博），从而将联邦担保的银行存款和美联储贷款与街道上最严重的冒险行为隔离开。这是他能得到的最接近格拉斯-斯蒂格尔(Glass-Steagall)的东西，1933年的法律迫使摩根大通(J.P. Morgan)等大银行在导致大萧条的崩溃后将其风险较高的投资银行业务分拆到新公司（在这种情况下，摩根斯坦利）。


沃尔克告诉我，处于经济核心的商业银行，能够从美联储贴现窗口提取廉价资金，"不应该做有风险的资本市场业务"。"我不希望他们成为高盛，经营无数的自营业务。" 但总统 "显然决定不接受 "他的建议，沃尔克当时说。

盖特纳和萨默斯听取了华尔街的意见，认为沃尔克的建议是不可行的。怎么可能有人知道某项交易是 "自营"，而不是为客户进行的合法对冲或 "做市 "交易。他们说，这根本行不通。于是沃尔克开始在全国各地发表一系列演讲，推动对金融系统进行更多的根本性改革--与奥巴马政府和国会的大多数成员分道扬镳。

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到2009年底和2010年初--特别是在马萨诸塞州的特别选举结果让曾经的民主党人斯科特-布朗获得了这个席位之后，奥巴马开始认为他的政府在这个问题上显得很脆弱。据一位参与经济政策制定的高级政府官员说，总统开始认为盖特纳和萨默斯在金融改革方面走得不够远。事实上，他们几乎抵制了所有针对华尔街的结构性改革，不仅是沃尔克的计划，还有阿肯色州参议员布兰奇-林肯关于禁止银行进行掉期交易的想法。

而且，华尔街似乎也没有自己的变化。2009年12月，总统听说2009年的年终奖实际上会比2007年（灾难发生的前一年）的年终奖更多，感到非常愤怒。"等等，让我搞清楚，"奥巴马在一次白宫会议上说。"这些人保留了创纪录的奖金，因为他们有利可图，而他们有利可图只是因为我们拯救了他们。" 于是在那年年底在罗斯福厅的一次会议上，欧巴马说。"我不相信沃尔克在这方面是不对的。" 副总统乔-拜登是沃尔克的长期粉丝，他直言不讳地说道。"我非常确信沃尔克在这方面是正确的！"

奥巴马在2010年1月21日的白宫新闻发布会上正式提出了这一规则，沃尔克罕见地出席了发布会，并宣布。"我们把它称为沃尔克规则，以我身后那个高个子的名字命名"。参议员Jeff Merkley（俄勒冈州）和Carl Levin（密歇根州）后来将该规则正式引入多德-弗兰克法案。但即便如此，盖特纳还是在执行上拖了后腿，在接下来的两年半时间里，华尔街的律师们在提案中加入了漏洞和豁免条款。


事实上，沃尔克规则在本周通过之前，一直面临着被漏洞害死的严重危险。最后，主要是一个监管机构，比其他任何机构都更坚定地反对这些努力，并设法避免了最糟糕的淡化。加里-根斯勒，即将离任的商品期货交易委员会主席。与沃尔克的高大身材一样，根斯勒是沃尔克的杰夫，是一个事实上的团队的重要组成部分。

与沃尔克一样，56岁的根斯勒也是早期时代的遗民，不一定是你所期望的在21世纪第二个十年对付华尔街的人。90年代，在财政部长罗伯特-鲁宾(Robert Rubin)手下工作时，根斯勒曾帮助开辟了大规模放松银行监管的道路，最终导致了次贷危机的发生。因此，弗吉尼亚州的伯尼-桑德斯（Bernie Sanders）和华盛顿州的玛丽亚-坎特维尔（Maria Cantwell）等进步的参议员起初甚至搁置了对他的CFTC提名。但在证词和后来的采访中，Gensler成为极少数承认自己在90年代放开金融的判断错误的前克林顿或布什政府官员之一。而作为CFTC的负责人，他试图纠正所犯的严重错误。

正是根斯勒，利用他在过去三年中在打击场外衍生品交易（这是银行自营利润的主要来源）方面积累的无可比拟的专业知识，主要领导了加强沃尔克规则并将其推广到全世界的行动，特别是当人们发现银行可以通过将交易转移到海外业务来规避该规则时，有几个人就这样做了。他与证券交易专员卡拉-斯坦恩（Kara Stein）一起，也是一项关键条款背后的关键人物，该条款要求银行承担举证责任，证明他们所从事的活动不是自营交易，迫使他们提供定期分析，将此类交易与适当的对冲或其他经批准的活动联系起来。Gensler和其他监管机构还迫使银行将其对冲活动限制在特定的可识别投资上，并禁止所谓的组合对冲--这使得银行可以从事复杂的交易，以对冲广泛的投资组合的一般风险。根斯勒把臭名昭著的 "伦敦鲸 "事件作为一个警示故事，当时甚至像摩根大通这样的蓝筹银行也被发现进行衍生品投注，造成62亿美元的损失，并将其掩盖为投资组合对冲。根斯勒 "在这个问题上大动干戈"，马里兰大学的监管专家、CFTC的顾问迈克尔-格林伯格说。


通过从沃尔克手中接过接力棒，并几乎独自推动监管数万亿的海外衍生品交易，根斯勒最初在财政部和白宫为自己赢得了敌人，特别是当欧洲和亚洲政府开始抱怨他努力将其权限扩大到美国银行的海外活动。最后，在财政部长雅各布-卢的帮助下，根斯勒赢得了不那么热心的监管机构的支持，事实证明，雅各布-卢比盖特纳更热心支持他的努力。在最近一次几乎可以说是由詹斯勒撰写的演讲中，卢称赞该规则 "忠实于奥巴马总统的愿景"，并附和詹斯勒说，该规则旨在禁止 "像'伦敦鲸'这样的高风险交易赌注被掩盖为减轻风险的对冲。"

现在，在没有什么大张旗鼓的情况下，Gensler即将离开CFTC--也许他是整个后金融危机时期最无名的英雄，沃尔克规则的有效性还有待观察，特别是由于监管机构已经将实施时间推迟到2015年。银行无疑会起诉以进一步改变它。但即使是一些对多德-弗兰克法案持怀疑态度的人也认为，这可能是迄今为止反对华尔街银行集中权力的最大突破。宣传团体Better Markets的负责人丹尼斯-凯莱赫（Dennis Kelleher）在一份声明中说："它不会终止华尔街的所有赌博活动，但应该限制它们，并减少对主街的风险。主要是由于保罗-沃尔克(Paul Volcker)和加里-詹斯勒(Gary Gensler)这对奇特的夫妇，该规则可能会被证明是解决大而不倒问题的唯一最有效的办法。

Michael Hirsh是《国家期刊》的首席记者。