BANK RULE DUEL

Volcker hits critics

Paul Volcker was out in force Tuesday defending the rule named after him.

As one of the primary architects of Obama-era Wall Street regulations, Volcker warned that the Trump administration is attempting a “subterfuge” to weaken trading rules intended to make banks safer.

Volcker (inset) — who was the Federal Reserve chairman from 1979 to 1987 and chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board under President Obama from 2009 to 2011 — cast doubt on a recent push by regulators to simplify trading rules he helped craft, and suggested that they’re being influenced by highpriced lobbyists.

“People say they’re for simplification when they’re really against it,” Volcker, 90, told The Post in an exclusive interview.

“You’ve got to watch out for those guys,” he added, without specifying who.

The comments come about a month after the Fed’s board of governors voted to make changes to trading rules that came into effect as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill — in particular, to simplify requirements for a trading rule named after Volcker.

That rule stops banks that take taxpayer funds from trading with their own money — a practice that was criticized as accelerating the 2008 financial crisis.

Volcker suggested that Wall Street’s interest in simplifying the rule could just be a “subterfuge.”

“To what degree — and this is not known — is it going to become a vehicle for weakening the substance, weakening the core [of the Volcker rule]? If it’s simplification, great.”

Behind the effort to weaken the rules, he said, were Wall Street banks and weak politicians who are “susceptible to any little visit from a friendly” lobbyist. During the talk, Volcker also mocked Wall Street’s claims that the rules have hurt business.

“We only had 10 years of uninterrupted expansion,” Volcker said at a Manhattan event held by the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

“US banks are poised to hand out $170 billion [in dividends and buybacks] — because they’re suffering, because of the Volcker rule,” he added, citing an article in the Financial Times.