The Volcker Rule prohibition on high-risk, speculative proprietary trading at taxpayer-backed banks is a critical pillar of financial reform. It is targeted at preventing another catastrophic financial crash like 2008 and eliminating the reckless, get-rich-quick, bonus-driven gambling culture that infected banks’ dangerous activities and warped priorities in the years before that crash. The Volcker Rule prohibited both direct inside-the-bank and indirect outside-the-bank (via external funds) proprietary (“prop”) trading to close those Wall Street gambling casinos.
