Has Dodd-Frank Already Gutted Wall Street?

washingtonpost.com — New York magazine’s Gabe Sherman paints a portrait of the brave new world facing post-bubble Wall Street, mostly as described by the bankers themselves. He points to falling profits at the biggest banks and plummeting bonuses as concrete signs that boom times are over. But Dimon’s words, at least, overstate reality: Although J.P. Morgan Chase and Citibank have spun off their arms for proprietary trading — speculative bets that firms make for their own benefit, rather than their clients’ — many others are still pressing federal regulators to reconsider the ban, potentially adding exceptions to those already in the Volcker rule, the part of the act designed to prohibit proprietary trading.

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