This suggests that a better question is whether to introduce the Volcker rule in addition to, rather than instead of, ring fencing. In the interest of simplicity, I would say no.

But, while all major countries are signed up to this approach, many of them think that more is needed. The US now has its Volcker rule (though disputes between banks and regulators about just how to define it continue).

The Independent Inquiry Committee, composed of internationally known and respected experts, was chaired by Paul Volcker.

The Volcker Inquiry was critical of various United Nations procurement cases in the early years of the oil for food programme.

FLORENCE Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker provided the central inspiration for President Barack Obama s proposal for overhauling banking. Without question the most successful central banker of the twentieth century, Volcker was an early and persistent voice warning of the problems of what he called the bright new financial system.

Costa Rica has taken due note of the many though scattered references made by the Volcker Committee to the Council's working methods.

The French plan looks more like a Gallic version of the Volcker rule than Vickers à la française. It is far less rigorous than the banks feared, given President François Hollande s fiery rhetoric in his electoral campaign last year, in which he anathematized the financial sector as the true enemy.

If big banks have become too complex to regulate, then a workable Volcker Rule is the best way to start simplifying them. And, if the problem is systemically risky derivatives trading in banks and elsewhere, then the priority given to derivatives traders over nearly every creditor ought to be curtailed.

These and similar phrases have been common currency among American legislators, regulators, and financial firms for decades. Even in the wake of the financial crisis that erupted in 2008, they trip off the word processors of a hundred submissions challenging the so called Volcker rule (which would bar banks from making proprietary investments).

As Haldane notes, even the celebrated Volcker rule, intended to build a better wall between more mundane commercial banking and riskier proprietary bank trading, has been hugely watered down as it grinds through the legislative process. The former Federal Reserve chairman s simple idea has been co opted and diluted through hundreds of pages of legalese.

Unlike their cousin the Volcker Rule, neither Liikanen nor the UK approach attempts to draw a line between types of trading. Judging whether trading is proprietary might not quite require windows into men s souls (which in another context Queen Elizabeth I wisely avoided), but America s experience shows that it is difficult all the same.

Progress toward reconciling US and EU rules on derivatives one of the main causes of the financial crisis has fallen apart. And plans by the EU and the United Kingdom to ring fence bank deposits are poised to depart in form and substance from one another and from the newly unveiled Volcker rule in the US.

The Volcker rule, whereby commercial banks would be barred from trading on their own account, and from owning hedge funds and private equity firms, languishes in Congress. In the UK, an Independent Commission on Banking, headed by Sir John Vickers, rejected separation of retail from investment banking, recommending instead ring fencing deposits from the investment arms of universal banks.

(jk) Interim measures under rule 92 (old rule 86) of the Committee's rule of procedure

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The existing rule 8 would be renumbered as rule 8.2.

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