Volcker says the system is broken...(Q&A)

http://seekingalpha.com/article/180632-volcker-not-persuasive-enough-to-convince-obama You feel strongly that the financial system has gotten out of whack. Do you think the American political process is capable of fixing it? The American political process is about as broken as the financial system. Therefore, one has to be a bit skeptical. Just to give you one little example, one unrelated to the... [more]

http://seekingalpha.com/article/180632-volcker-not-persuasive-enough-to-convince-obama You feel strongly that the financial system has gotten out of whack. Do you think the American political process is capable of fixing it? The American political process is about as broken as the financial system. Therefore, one has to be a bit skeptical. Just to give you one little example, one unrelated to the financial crisis. Here we are on Dec. 29, almost a year after the Inauguration, and there is no Under Secretary of the Treasury. That should be an important position. How can we run a government in the middle of a financial crisis without doing the ordinary, garden-variety administrative work of filling the relevant agencies? The Treasury is an outstanding example of a broken system, but it’s not the only one. So why haven’t your views prevailed with the Administration? I wasn’t persuasive enough. How many meetings have you had with the President about this? Not very many but…the President has heard my arguments a number of times. Has he heard them one on one, where you’ve had an opportunity to say "This, Mr. President, is why you need to make sure that commercial banks…" That’s not the way the process works. But do you feel like you have had sufficient opportunity with the President to make your case? Well, what’s sufficient? He’s the President. He decides. You have one of the most powerful and persuasive voices in the global financial conversation. You flatter everybody. I am one voice in the conversation, and there are others. [less]