Foxes and Hedgehogs

This morning, I read Volcker's editorial in the NY Times, and with the reforms he thinks of putting in place - he advocates more control over banks than most of those with any say - the banks "would be free to to innovate, to trade, to speculate, to manage private pools of capital...". My sense is that trading can't go backwards, and that the use derivatives and securitization will continue unabated, albeit correlated with ups and downs in market activity.

- Even if an equivalent of Glass-Steagall was put in place, little would change, since the money would simply move to hedge funds and private equity firms. A driver for many of the changes was an increasing unequal society, and there is little chance of it becoming more equitable any times soon. - I assumed that Obama's policies would be 'Better-Same' than Republicans, meaning generally better for people, but with the same entrenched interests. His presidency will not change very much in the US political landscape, and the same corporate interests will be served, for the most part unabated, including finance. - Being in banking technology, the only significant changes in banking I've seen, and these are not transformative, are algorithmic trading and an intensification of risk systems. One of the big change drivers in banking/finance is technology, such that more and more activities are handled electronically and by technology. - The middle office, notably a morass of f...