Lobbying Interests and Regulatory Reform
An interesting look into the intense lobbying of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission by business to help shape the new financial regulatory rules enacted to help manage the largely unregulated derivatives market.
Notably, this quote: “The law gives the CFTC jurisdiction over commodity, interest rate and some cred…it default swaps, the largest share of the derivatives markets. The financial stakes are high. U.S. commercial banks held derivatives with a notional value of $223.4 trillion in the second quarter, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.”
This is important regulation for this market. Ultimately, it remains to be seen what the final interpretations of the bill will look like and whether it will still have teeth when completed by next July. The amount of lobbying and “exemption requests” by major derivative players is impressive.