By Rachel Goldfarb, originally published on Next New Deal
Click here to subscribe to Roosevelt First, our weekday morning email featuring the Daily Digest.
Dodd-Frank Spawns Software to Comprehend Dodd-Frank (Marketplace)
Sabri Ben-Achour speaks to Roosevelt Institute Fellow Mike Konczal and others about the complexity of the Volcker Rule. Mike says the scrutiny of the
courts has created much of that complexity.
There are also a great many gray areas and exceptions for when activities are allowed or not allowed, says Mike Konczal, a fellow with the Roosevelt Institute.
“Volcker and Dodd-Frank wanted to make sure that banks could still do what we want them to do — interact with clients, do market making, buy and sell things for their clients — and what happens is a lot of that activity kind of blurs with proprietary trading,” he says. Another reason the rules have become complicated is that, simply put, a lot of people have sued. The rules have had to become extra detailed to pass scrutiny.
"These rules from Dodd-Frank have come under extensive criticism in the courts,” says Konczal. “We want that kind of scrutiny it’s important to have it, but it’s become so obsessive and so burdensome that it’s actually made the rules a lot clunkier than they need to be.”
Follow below the fold for more.
Unions Keep Pushing Emanuel to Challenge Interest Rate Hedges (Crain's Chicago Business)
Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Brad Miller has joined the push to convince the Chicago Board of Education to seek legal remedies for some bad financial transactions, writes Greg Hinz.
The Big Bank Backlash Begins (ProPublica)
Jesse Eisinger reports on the banks' take on current regulatory practices, after attending a conference where their lawyers discussed strategies for dealing with tough regulators.
Should the Poor Be Allowed to Vote? (The Atlantic)
Peter Beinart says voter ID laws are part of a long and unfortunate American tradition of distrusting poor people's ability to make reasoned political choices.
America's Middle Class Knows It Faces a Grim Retirement (LA Times)
Michael Hiltzik looks at a scary set of survey results from Wells Fargo, and says that expanding Social Security is the best option to ensure that retirement is possible for the middle class.
The Sharing Economy’s ‘First Strike’: Uber Drivers Turn Off the App (In These Times)
In what some are calling the first labor strike in the sharing economy, Uber drivers in five cities stopped picking up rides yesterday, reports Rebecca Burns.
Can Student Credit Unions Solve the College Affordability Problem? (The Nation)
Helene Barthelemy reports on a Columbia University group's attempt to open a fully student-run credit union on campus, with broad goals that include offering lower rate student loans.