Proposals to improve public disclosure of corporate and government accountability data attracted the most interest from members of the public, a Sunlight Foundation analysis of 10 years of public comments shows.
Continue readingCFTC nominees gave campaign cash
When the members of the Senate Agriculture Committee meet today to consider the nominations of three new commissioners for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, they will be voting on three professionals who have played the political donor game.
Continue readingCFTC’s Credit Swap Reporting Requirements Result in Chaos
The U.S. is trying to monitor the kinds of transactions that contributed to the 2008 financial crash, and subsequent recession, but the effort has shot itself in the foot, all for lack of a data standard. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has been tasked with oversight of credit default swaps, but their attempts to define a standard for reporting in this previously unmonitored market have not worked out as planned.
Continue readingBig banks dominate Dodd-Frank meetings with regulators
This piece was prepared in collaboration with Drew Vogel In the two years since the mammoth Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act became law, federal regulators have heard overwhelmingly from the biggest banks, according to a new Sunlight Foundation analysis of financial regulatory agency meeting logs. The voices of reform-oriented groups have been much quieter – particularly in the past 12 months. Since July 21, 2010 (when the president signed Dodd-Frank), regulators at the three major banking regulatory agencies – Treasury, the Fed and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) – have reported meeting with 20 big banks and banking associations on average a combined 12.5 times per week – as compared to on average just 2.3 meetings with reform-oriented groups. The top 20 banks show up 1,298 times in meeting logs at the three agencies, while groups favoring tighter regulations of the financial markets show up just 242 times.
Continue readingChamber of Commerce meets with CFTC chairman
Yesterday a lobbyist and executives representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has criticized the whistleblower provisions in the Dodd-Frank financial law, met with Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), to discuss the issue.
Under the new law, the CFTC is given the authority to award whistleblowers 10 to 30 percent of the amount recovered when information they provide leads to an enforcement action yielding sanctions of $1 million or more. They can also file for relief if they face retaliation for their disclosures.
"Put simply, the proposed rule creates a set of ...
Continue readingFinance regulator crafts new derivatives rules with outside help
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has been tasked, along with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), with setting new... View Article
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