“Lisa Donner, head of Americans for Financial Reform, contends the CFTC budget was slashed at the behest of Wall Street lobbyists seeking to undercut the effectiveness of financial reform. The budget savings are so miniscule that ‘it’s not plausible that the real issue is budget numbers,’ she says.”
“[W]e are troubled by the narrow scope of the Release and some of the assumptions underlying it. AFR believes that the Commission needs to consider the broader costs and benefits to the public of permitting ever-increasing speed and ubiquity of automated trading technologies. We believe that such an analysis would support stronger limitations on automated trading than appear to be contemplated…”
“In a brief advisory statement, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has closed a specious, lobbyist-concocted loophole in the regulation of the derivatives markets. By doing so, the Commission has reaffirmed one of the most important and hard-won victories of the Dodd-Frank Act.”
After the 2008 crisis, it became clear that regulators and many sophisticated market participants had been kept in the dark about major risks and exposures in our financial system. On October 11, 2013, AFR and Georgetown Law Center co-hosted this half-day conference on the progress made – and the work that remains to be done – toward meaningful transparency on Wall Street.
AFR letter sounds the alarm against HR 1003, which would undermine Dodd-Frank by more than doubling the number of cost-benefit analysis requirements imposed on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Three years after the Dodd-Frank Act, “There is no excuse for further delay… Without cross-border applicability, there is no effective regulation of derivatives.”
AFR sent letters to members of the House and Senate urging them to support full funding for the CFTC. The CFTC’s role in regulating commodity markets is vital to overall financial stability and cannot do its job without this vital funding.
CFTC chairman Gary Gensler is trying to make sure that banks cannot shield derivatives bets from effective oversight by funneling them overseas.
Under H.R. 677, the CFTC loses its jurisdiction over inter-affiliate swaps, which are defined so loosely that, according to AFR’s Marcus Stanley, “the affiliates don’t even need to share majority ownership… That’s a big, whopping exemption.”
AFR sent a letter to members of Congress expressing strong support for President Obama’s proposal in the 2014 budget to increase funding for the CFTC.