Reply #31: "This" was not started months ago

[Political Heretic]

"THIS" refers to splitting banks, an approach NOT supported by Giethner or Summers, and on which the White House would never endorse even when Congress suggested it....

I say again, the White House didn't back the calls of congress to reinstate glass-stiegall, with Robert Gibbs refusing to comment when asked. And Giethner and Summers publicly opposed it, and reports from all over near unanimously suggesting that Volker was being shut out of the process.

They supported other reforms being talked about and rolled out, most of them minor, a few major (that are now in doubt by the way, like the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which Dodd is trying to drop).

Tim Giethner and Larry summers opposed splitting banks, and Volker who supported doing it was shut out of things up until this point.

The change that people are discussing is NOT suggesting that the administration never talked about any wall street reform ever until now. The change people are discussing is the fact that the administration previously publicly non-committal and privately opposed to splitting banks (when I say private, I only mean not in an official press statement, though Giethner and Summers are both on the record opposing it) is now publicly committing to restoring glass-stiegall by splitting banks....

...by the way, Tim Giethner has already given his quotes to the press saying he has "serious reservations" about the Presidents proposal. He's actually going on the record failing to back his own administration's policy. That and the fact that it was Volker, and not Giethner who was standing behind the president for the FIRST TIME is more than enough to suggest that there has been something of a sea change within the administration and a decision to turn toward even more aggressive wall street reform (that doesn't imply that they were never pushing any reform, only suggests that they have made a decision to ramp that up, not down).