The stated mission of the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) is to protect market users and the public from fraud, manipulation, and abusive practices related to the sale of commodity and financial futures and options, and to foster open, competitive, and financially sound futures and option markets
Posted by Felix Shipkevich
Posted by Felix Shipkevich
Jul 8, 2013
After weeks of speculation, (click here) it looks like the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) will conclude a foreign regulatory issue this Friday, July 12th. The vote will regard how domestic regulations on swaps apply to foreign firms wishing to do business with those in the United States.
The regulations have become a devisive issue in the CFTC , with commissioners on the board giving competing advice on what exactly to do. Current CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler, Democrat, has advocated applying the domestic regulations to the foreign firms as well, but there has been some dissent. Mark Wetjen, Republican, has recommended being more cautious with a ruling on foreign firms, citing that it may hurt, rather than help, the US economy.
Conjecture that Gary Gensler’s term would be over in July prompted some to think that voting on swaps regulation would occur after his position were filled by someone else.
This issue has become important for the derivatives market, and some key players have gotten involved in the recent discussions with the regulatory giant. Speculation that foreign firms would be required to comply with CFTC standards has purportedly caused instability in the market.
The interested parties go beyond just banks, firms and regulators though. Recently, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren has weighed in on the issue. In an interview with the Hill on June 20th, she said that “It would be a real mistake for commissioners to think they can run out the clock and just hold tight until Gary Gensler’s term expires. I will certainly still be here and watching this process very closely” But since it appears Gary Gensler will also vote on the regulation’s application to foreign markets, her concerns were unfounded.
As head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC], Brooksley Born became alarmed by the lack of oversight of the secretive, multitrillion-dollar over-the-counter derivatives market. Her attempts to regulate derivatives ran into fierce resistance from then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and then-Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who prevailed upon Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation. This is the edited transcript of an interview conducted on Aug. 28, 2009.
Vocabulary to know of which the market became dependent upon. These instruments were once regulated by the CFTC.
Swap Exemption
Hybrid Instrument Rule
Swap Policy Statement
Hybrid Interpretation
It was like my worst nightmare coming true. (click here) I had had enormous concerns about the over-the-counter derivatives [OTC] market, including credit default swaps, for a number of years. The market was totally opaque; we now call it the dark market. So nobody really knew what was going on in the market.
And then it became obvious as Lehman Brothers failed, as AIG [American International Group] suddenly appeared to be on the brink of tremendous defaults and turned out had been a major credit default swap dealer and needed hundreds of billions of dollars to keep it alive, the contagion in the marketplace from those failures brought many, many of our biggest financial services companies to the brink of collapse. And it was very frightening....
