The Volcker Rule: The Great Recession In The United States

In late 2007 until mid-2009 there was the Great Recession. This Recession was the longest Recession since World War II. Some of the most notable impacts of the recession are that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) dropped 4.3 percent, the unemployment rate was the highest at 10 in October 2009 (2). The Recession had not only effected the GDP and the unemployment rate, it had also effected the S&P 500 which had dropped almost sixty percent from its high in 2007 until March of 2009. As the financial market was crashing, so was the net worth of households in the US and the nonprofit organizations (2). When the financial crisis and the recession was getting worse with time the government implemented economic growth measures all over the world. In particular, the United States stimulus programs that used a combination of government spending and tax cuts (2). The Federal Reserve in particular responded in different ways than before. At first, they went …show more content…
This rule is called the Volcker Rule, and it will restrict US activities (4). The Volcker Rule was named after Paul Volcker who former chairman of the Federal Reserve. This rule was made to keep banks from doing proprietary trading, which is making bets for their own profit. Before the argument that arose on the 19th of January in 2010, no one thought this rule was going to be a problem, until there was an upset in Massachusetts. On January 21, 2010, the Obama Administration announced that the rule will be a central element of the Act (4). At first this proposal did not get a warm welcome from the Senate Banking Committee. The rule started to pick up after the Obama Administration pushed the Senate to include it in the Act. On April 16, 2010, the rule got even more momentum when the SEC charged Goldman Sachs with fraud, stating that they had failed to disclose items regarding some CDO’s