Volcker's Game

Today's must-read comes from Steve M. at NMMNB.  The banksters, it seems, are going to have a rough time of it in 2010.  The forced consolidation of the industry means that the community bank is rapidly disappearing from the country, to be replaced by the Too Big To Fail megabanks.  140 banks went under in 2009...I expect far more to go under in 2010 as the commercial real estate market continues to swan dive.

Needless to say, the banksters are beefing up their lobbying presence bribery in 2010 significantly.

Steve's post ends with this point on Paul Volcker, however:

But Volcker is the Colin Powell of this administration. Maybe he resists administration groupthink on the economy more vigorously than Powell did on foreign policy in the first Bush term, but, like Powell, he's the guy nobody in the administration listens to. If he wants to make the case that we need a return to Glass-Steagall-style regulation and an end to "too big to fail," he should have the guts to resign, making it obvious that he's not doing so "for personal reasons." He should write a book. He should speak out against business as usual as an independent gray eminence. He should, in other words, be outside the tent pissing in, rather than the opposite, which is just where it suits the fat-cat-friendly administration to have him.

Agreed.  It's time for Volcker to put the screws on Obama from the outside and do the honorable thing.  Right now, he is effectively neutered.