I thought of Alexis Goldstein as just another disgruntled employee from the world of finance, but she’s not. She had worked for Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, and elsewhere, and is now a member of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Ms Goldstein shares her distaste for Wall Street and her devotion to the OWS movement in an article she recently wrote for n+1 Magazine:
 

One glaring question is not addressed in Ms. Goldstein’s article: What does the Occupy Wall Street movement believe in? What are its core principles?

I guess it was a just a matter of time (and hundreds of millions of lobbying dollars), but now that the laser focus on banker misdeeds seems to be waning, lawmakers are signalling their willingness to dump the Volcker Rule forbidding prop trading at investment banks. So I guess the joke's on those banks who've already divested their prop trading arms.

Realizing they were dealing with dullards, the banking lobby dumbed their arguments down as much as possible so that Congress could understand them. They even went so far as to create the "Volcker Rule for Dummies":

For decades, traders have been the highest paid dudes on Wall Street. Deep six-figure bonuses were once de rigueur for the mere mortals while the full-fledged masters of the universe easily went on to eclipse their CEOs and rack up eight-figure bonuses as well as the occasional mental disorder or two.

Well, that’s all in the past now. Midas wrote awhile back that trading bonuses are set to get the shaft given the current climate, but unfortunately, that’s way better than what’s about to happen:

Sorry monkeys, but I guess you can all kiss your millionaire trader dreams good-bye.

More changes are in the offing for prop traders who specialize in making markets, and these changes are going to effect the pocketbook. In a nutshell, market makers will only be allowed to be compensated on the spread of the securities in which they make a market, and no longer on the appreciation of said securities.

These new regulations are a part of Dodd-Frank generally lumped under the Volcker Rule. While many of the bulge bracket banks have spun off (or are in the process of spinning off) their prop trading arms, these new rules will effect hundreds of Wall Street operations. If everything plays out the way it's going now, trader compensation will be based solely upon fees and commissions, and any profits on a trade will be ineligible for compensation consideration.

After three plus years of snooping around, it seems that the Federal government is ready to blow the lid off insider trading wink-and-nudge practices at some of Wall Street's biggest name institutions.

The key surrounds passing of nonpublic information by independent analysts and consultants who work for companies that provide "expert network" services to hedge funds and mutual funds.

Since this topic has in many ways become the late motif of the post-crisis financial world, I don't think anybody needs to rant on it any further...however...

With all the new financial rules and regulations, ideas such as "honesty" and "fairness" have forcibly been added to the dog-eat-dog mixture of markets. This creates a potential hale storm of falling pianos as to what can be viewed as illegal and/or illicit in trading decisions and taken positions.

Perhaps language should have been included in the Volcker Rule to prevent stories like this one from being published.

As the populist bore that is financial regulation continues to trudge along, we have early results of predictions most of us made months ago. As proprietary trading by the major investment banks winds down, hedge funds are set to pounce on the available glut of trading talent.

In fact, the same hedge funds which were vilified as the destroyers of the American economy will now be "punished" by the Dodd-Frank Act to the tune of restocking their ranks with the best prop traders that Bulge Brackets can no longer use themselves.

Goldman, is one of the first banks attempting to protect its territory by spinning off Goldman Sachs Principal Strategies (GSPS). Others will emerge with similar plans, but don't expect it to be easy.

How will the dreaded Volcker rule really effect the proprietary trading of banks on The Street? For going on two years now, we've heard nothing but how irresponsible traders have landed America in a pool of sludge along with the wee baby turtles.

"These swashbuckling financial pirates in tailor-made suits, swinging from vines with swords clenched firmly in tooth, avoiding the long arm of the law and robbing the innocent investor, must be stopped!!!", was the rhetoric of the day.

News coming out of several large banks, including Morgan and Citi , shows financial firms taking a pro-active stance which may take a large chunk out of the expected government bite.

Sorry for the delay on this one, guys. Yesterday was pretty nuts. As promised, here are the ways I think Wall Street will benefit from the coming reforms and actually emerge stronger. But first, this all hinges on the assumption that the reform is based on some return to the Glass-Steagall Act, or the Volcker Rule, or whatever you want to call it. Obviously, if that doesn't happen all bets are off.

First, it's easy to take a dim view of the proposed reforms and look at it from a glass-half-empty perspective. This view was best articulated by Michael Barone a week ago when he pointed out that the Dodd Bill will only serve as a cash pipeline to reward the very guys who are responsible for this mess in the first place.

He has a point, and institutionalizing the notion of "Too Big To Fail" is a mistake of colossal proportions in my opinion. If you remove the very real consequence of failure from the equation, then moral hazard rules the day. There is not a single bank in this country (or any other, for that matter) whose failure today would bring an end to life as we know it.