Article on Evolution of Banking Decision

[sandnsea]

Scrolling way down in the article, which matches my memory too. I'm still putting together the pieces of when this announcement was first mentioned by Gibbs.

"...Administration officials say the White House pivot came in October.

Mr. Kanjorski was pushing an amendment to the House's financial-regulation bill that would clamp down on big banks. With the amendment gaining momentum, Mr. Geithner dispatched Michael Barr, an assistant secretary at the Treasury and confidant of Mr. Kanjorski, to help shape it. That month, Mr. Geithner testified before the Financial Services Committee that he backed the amendment's scope.

Treasury officials feared headlines would blare that Mr. Geithner had backed breaking up the banks. But the president continued to endure criticism, in particular from his left, that he was coddling Wall Street. In talks with his financial team, Mr. Obama started letting his frustration show, asking why he was on the wrong side of the "too big to fail" debate.

White House officials said the president called a meeting of his entire economic team to press for additional proposals. But its members were at odds: Messrs. Geithner and Summers argued that proprietary trading was a problem but not a central cause of the financial crisis, according to an official familiar with the talks. Mr. Volcker saw proprietary trading as a fundamental risk.

In December, Mr. Obama decided he wanted to be on what he saw as "the right side" of the debate, according to an administration official. He asked his team to bring him specific proposals to limit the size of financial institutions and halt proprietary trading. Spurring their thinking: Goldman Sachs had sought the protection of the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis, and was now making big profits from its own trading, in part because it benefited from the explicit backing of the U.S.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704423204575017543560874692.html?mod=WSJ-Markets-MIDDLETopNews

[FrenchieCat]

1. Aye! I wrote on this in an earlier thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=388&topic_id=14292&mesg_id=14307