Industry News Article Discusses the CFTC's Results from the Open Meeting (Energy Metro Desk) (with Lofchie Comment)
In the latest installment of the Energy Metro Desk series "Drums along the Potomac," editor-in-chief John Sodergreen reported on the recent CFTC open meeting which resulted in "modest" proposals to CFTC rules.
During the open meeting, the CFTC proposed "policy tweaks" to various Dodd-Frank rules that Mr. Sodergreen called "burdensome." The rule proposals involved the residual interest deadline and recordkeeping relating to commodity interest and related cash or forward transactions.
An additional item was the treatment of forward contracts with volumetric optionality, which the CFTC proposed to clarify whether or not an agreement, contract or transaction that provides for variations in delivery amount would be considered a forward contract. Mr. Sodergreen stated that he expects the comments to all three proposals to be fairly straightforward: "while burdensome, it's better than before."
Mr. Sodergreen praised Mercatus Scholar Hester Peirce's report on the informal mechanisms through which the CFTC regulates. (See our news story covering Ms. Peirce's report.)
Lofchie Comment: Mr. Sodergreen notes the lack of drama in meetings dedicated to the unlimited amount of clean-up items the CFTC must address. In fact, the CFTC has been gaining credibility as material progress has been made on many of these items. The CFTC's determination and hard work, however, does not obviate the need to re-examine bigger issues and make some material course corrections.
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The above link is to an excerpt from the most recent issue of Energy Metro Desk, which is published biweekly by Scudder Publishing Group, an energy trade news publishing company based in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Those who are interested in learning more about Energy Metro Desk may do so by visiting www.energymetro.com or sending e-mail to [email protected]. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Scudder Publishing Group, LLC. Copyright 2014.