"Can one group of employees be so richly rewarded, the traders, for essentially speculative, impersonal, short-term trading activities while professional commercial bankers providing essential commercial banking services to customers, and properly imbued with fiduciary values, be confined to a much more modest structure of compensation?"
—
Really, what the Volcker Rule boils down to is the government forcefully simplifying banks so certain employees get paid less. Mr. Volcker is upfront about this fact. In a letter to regulators commenting on the rule that bears his name, the former central banker wrote.
