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Go Home Downsizing CFTC

TIMOTHY NOAH NOVEMBER 14, 2011

Downsizing CFTC

BY TIMOTHY NOAH

Psst, Occupy Wall Streeters. I've got a new slogan for you: "Feed The Watchdog!"

The Dodd-Frank financial-reform law gave the Securities and Exchange Commission lots of new regulatory responsibilities that House Republicans don't want it to have. Since they lack the votes to repeal Dodd-Frank, they're de-funding it instead. The SEC will have to make do with the same funding level it had in 2011. The same goes for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Under Dodd-Frank the CFTC is supposed to regulate derivatives. Remember derivatives? They helped sink the economy in 2008. But the GOP doesn't want the CFTC to regulate derivatives. So its budget won't increase either.

Look, this isn't rocket science. When a regulator is underfunded it becomes more timid and less competent. Diana B. Henriques, author of The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust, says one reason the SEC failed to follow up on leads that Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme was that turnover at the agency was very high--so high that the Government Accountability Office believed "it was likely to impair the agency's ability to carry out its mandate of protecting investors." Which, on the evidence, it did.

So, okay Occupy Wall Streeters, here's what you do. You march down to the Capitol. The guy you want to picket is Hal Rogers, chairman of House appropriations. His office is in 2406 Rayburn. No, wait, you'll never get past security. Okay then, picket outside the Rayburn House Office building. Better yet, organize a bunch of people to phone his office and ask why he's not allowing the SEC and the CFTC to carry out their legal responsibilities. If that's too complicated, then just ask why he's starving the financial watchdogs. Ask whether it might have something to do with the two hundred grand he's pulled in from commercial banks during his time in Congress, including $19,000 in the current election cycle. Be polite, but get the message across that you oppose these budget cuts. Tell him you're from Occupy Wall Street, but that you could just as easily be a Tea Partier, because they don't like politicians who sell out to Wall Street any more than you do.

 

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9 comments

nah, say you are a teapartier, if you say your are with OWS he will take it as validation.

- blackton

November 14, 2011 at 7:26pm

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Tell the Gentleman from Kentucky that you are a former New Jersey Governor & US Senator and evidently the CFTC doesn't have enough resources to catch those slipperly guys buying European Bonds.

- CRS9TNR

November 14, 2011 at 7:35pm

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Thanks TN. You seem to be the only one giving out this information. As usual, the supposed "liberal" MSM is asleep at the switch and ignores this story.

- tmmats

November 14, 2011 at 8:02pm

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But wait, Barack Obama raked in the dough from Wall Street in his 2008 run and he continues to do so. He has raised more money from Bain Capital, Mitt Romney's former firm, than Romney himself has. BHO has raised $76,000 from Bain to Romney's $34,0000, through September of this year. So do BHO's lectures addressed to Wall Street and his regulatory plans therefore bear the imprimatur of the Street's contributors to Barry?

- liberalref

November 14, 2011 at 9:19pm

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My idea is you just tell everyone who will listen that derivatives are unregulated and maybe unsafe and require by law that derivatives be labeled as a derivative so people know that a particular investment is unregulated and maybe unsafe. Soon the sellers of derivatives will be begging, begging for regulation.

- Nusholtz

November 14, 2011 at 9:34pm

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Yeah baby! Let's leverage some of this OWS muscle into some policies that will actually do good. Let's get on the news media with some positive actions that can be taken. It's nice that you're the 99%. Now do something to insure the 1% can't create yet another Ponzi scheme in CDO's.

- AllanL5

November 15, 2011 at 9:17am

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Yeah baby! Let's leverage some of this OWS muscle into some policies that will actually do good. Let's get on the news media with some positive actions that can be taken. It's nice that you're the 99%. Now do something to insure the 1% can't create yet another Ponzi scheme in CDO's.

- AllanL5

November 15, 2011 at 9:17am

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What do we want? Dodd-Frank! When do we want it? Now!

- AllanL5

November 15, 2011 at 9:18am

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I second tmmats. Thank you, TN!

- GSpinks

November 15, 2011 at 11:02am

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