December 23, 2011
I endorse the Volcker Rule, and believe that a bank's customers' deposits should never in any way be used for proprietary trading, or as a basis for proprietary trading in any way, without exception. Banks should only be able to trade customers' money at their customers' specific written case by case request.
It has been clearly demonstrated over the past thirty years, and in particular the last few years, that financial institutions will consistently take the unethical moral low ground and exploit their customers through proprietary trading and any other means at their disposal. Caveat emptor, in this complex interconnected electronic world, has proven insufficient protection for those who worked all their lives to save, only to see those savings erased forever by the improper actions of financial institutions previously trusted and unregulated. Specific and limiting regulation is the only route now, and too big to fail must be eliminated once and for all. Please pass the Volcker Rule, and strengthen it further by eliminating all exceptions.
The populace of a country should never again be required to pay the bill (through financially repressive money printing and persistent inflation) for the follies of banks and other financial institutions.