For Immediate Release: October 16th, 2020

Contact: Diop Harris at diop@ourfinancialsecurity.org or (269) 209-7733

Yesterday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission adopted a final rule that purports to limit excessive speculation in crucial commodity markets affecting the price of consumer products ranging from gasoline to bread. Unfortunately, the rule is far from achieving this goal. In fact, in critical areas it disempowers the Commission by delegating key decisions on the scope and enforcement of position limits to private actors, while limiting the Commission’s ability to review or change these decisions in order to address excessive speculation. As CFTC Commissioner Berkowitz commented in his dissenting statement today, ”the Final Rule appears more intent on limiting the actions and discretion of the Commission than it does on actually limiting such [excessive] speculation.”

“Ten years ago, Congress mandated that the CFTC restrict excessive speculation that inflated commodity prices. The passage of today’s rule, which appears designed to be ineffective, does not satisfy that mandate,” says Marcus Stanley, policy director for Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. “The rule, along with the rushed comment process, clearly reflects a hurry to put in place a weak standard that enables continuing speculation before the approaching election. This and other recent pro-industry CFTC rules need to be comprehensively re-examined in the future.”