“The final regulations are a ‘significant weakening’ of the CFTC’s original proposal, Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform, which includes AFL-CIO and other labor unions, said in an e-mail today. ‘The numerous opt-outs, exceptions, and safe harbors in the final rule can effectively give swap dealers a free pass out of compliance with key statutory protections,’ Stanley said.”

“Another consumer group shared Roper’s concerns. ‘These rules, unlike the initial proposal, are simply not sufficient to fully implement the Dodd-Frank protections,’ Americans for Financial Reform said in a release.”

AFR signed onto a letter with other business, consumer, and labor groups supporting full funding for the CFTC.

AFR wrote a letter to the CFTC urging them to maintain strong business conduct standards for derivatives dealers when dealing with municipalities and pension funds.

Read AFR’s comment letter in response to regulators posing the questions of whether stable value contracts meet the definition of swaps in the Dodd-Frank Act, and, if so, whether they should be regulated as swaps or given an exemption. The letter points out that stable value contracts have the characteristics of swaps and also pose some of the same risks as swaps do. It does not take a specific position on whether stable value contracts should be subject to all swaps regulation, but does urge regulators to address these dangers by extending business conduct standards to issuers of stable value contracts and also to ensure that issuers of financial guarantees have sufficient resources to back up their promises.

The CFTC’s proposed rules on margin and capital requirements must be substantially strengthened. Specifically, the process of collecting margin must be generally improved, both in terms of quantity and quality required. The suggested revisions would not only improve the overall effectiveness of the rules, but also the fairness, as the proposed rules seems to favor swap dealers.