Behold the power of finance capital. Despite shitting the bed and making us all clean it up, Wall Street will remain essentially the same as the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) caved to the banksters and will continue to allow a cartel to control the derivatives market. Under pressure from Wall Street lobbyists, federal regulators [...]

Gary Gensler, the head of the Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC), has made a pretty depressing admission to the BBC. During an interview on one of the greater financial scandals in modern times, the rigging of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), Chairman Gensler submitted that the global benchmark for interest rates is still “not [...]

Step right up and Spin the Revolving Door – and what is your prize? Why, a nice job on Wall Street working for the people you used to regulate – you wrote in the loopholes, now you get the cash for exploiting them! Latest contestants – staffers working for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). [...]

A new study confirms that high frequency trading, which already has declined in terms of its yield if not its use, endangers investors and basically turns stock markets into automated casinos where the average Joe can do little but get hurt. The chief economist at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Andrei Kirilenko, reports in a [...]

Lest I be described as a Gloomy Gus, let’s point out some good news for a change. Or at least some potentially good news. First, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission decided to appeal a ruling from a federal judge that cancelled the Dodd-Frank regulation on position limits. By a 3-2 vote, the commission agreed to [...]

Everybody get on the commodity speculation train. A federal judge today threw out the Dodd-Frank provision that empowered the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to set position limits on commodity trading. Judge Robert Wilkins said in his ruling that the CFTC did not prove the necessity of position limits to curb runaway speculation, and that the [...]

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has led the investigation into the Libor rate-rigging scandal. They have pursued civil charges, and worked with the Justice Department on criminal ones. But when the CFTC first learned about how banks could easily implement rate-rigging, they ignored it – when the agency was under the executive branch of President [...]

In Britain, the investigations into Barclays Bank manipulating the benchmark Libor rate have begun in earnest. Parliament approved an official inquiry into the Libor scandal, though only at the Parliamentary level rather than an independent investigation. This came after a shouting match between the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, and the shadow chancellor, [...]

JPMorgan Chase will spin off a “special investments group” to isolate the Chief Investment Office that created the Fail Whale trades. Basically they are taking the salvageable remains out of the CIO and ring-fencing it, while curtailing the speculative trading that led to the massive losses. That’s the official story, anyway. We won’t know the [...]

Federal regulators maintained at a Senate Banking Committee hearing yesterday that investigations against JPMorgan Chase were ongoing, but that several factors, especially the funding of their agencies, would hamper their efforts. This was the first confirmation by the heads of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler and Mary [...]

The President used a Rose Garden speech today to announce a new effort to crack down on rising oil market speculation. Here’s an excerpt from the remarks: We can’t afford a situation where speculators artificially manipulate markets by buying up oil, creating the perception of a shortage, and driving prices higher — only to flip [...]