U.S. allies have expressed concern that unless certain provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law are amended, the global recovery could be at risk. From CNBC:
The UK and Japan have urged the U.S. to rewrite its so-called "Volcker rule," claiming that trading restrictions on U.S. banks could hit the international sovereign debt market at a delicate moment in the global recovery.
George Osborne, the British chancellor, has joined forces with Jun Azumi, his Japanese counterpart, in warning in a column in today’s Financial Times that the U.S. banking reforms could make it "more difficult, costlier and riskier for countries to issue and distribute debt", at a time when many eurozone countries are already under strain.
The article is the highest profile expression of international concern about the impact of the U.S. reforms, coming from the finance ministers of two countries regarded as among Washington’s greatest economic allies.
The Volcker Rule (named after former Federal Reserve chair Paul Volcker) is a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act, passed in 2010, which places limits on financial institutions’ ability to engage in proprietary trading.
The "Occupy Wall Street" movement has been a supporter of the rule.