For former Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker, this year's landmark financial legislation was mildly disappointing. The bright-line separation of traditional banking from riskier trading activities that he had been stumping for-the Volcker rule-got watered down. But if that contribution doesn't secure for the venerable economist a permanent niche in the bank regulatory pantheon, then his rhetorical flourishes certainly should.rnMost memorably and pointedly, Volcker proclaimed the automated teller machine the greatest financial industry innovation of recent decades. Dismissing much of the inventiveness that produced securitizations and derivatives in their many flavors, automated market mechanisms and an explosion of investment choices, Volcker groused in a London speech last December, "I wish someone would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth."
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