Oil and Gas Investor.com. Home | Swap Negotiators. Summary of CFTC's Proposal, "Effective Date for Swap Regulation" : The Swap Report. CFTC complaint re oil 2008 manipulation. CFTC release 2008 oil trade manip complaint. How to lose friends in Washington: Be TARP cop - Fortune Finance. FORTUNE — Neil Barofsky has been chasing bad guys for much of his professional career. Whether it was as an assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York or in his most recent gig as the man trying to make sure hundreds of billions of government money doesn’t get stolen by scheming bankers, he is naturally prone to suspicion, if not outright distrust. “My view of financial institutions is colored by my years as a prosecutor,” Barofsky says. “None of this surprises me. They are profit-driven corporations that seek to maximize profitability without much regard to social gain.”
This squinty-eyed attitude made him an effective special investigator general overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP — which is to say, the guy policing the banks and auto companies that received $411 billion from taxpayers. But as the mood in Washington has shifted away from confrontation toward accommodation, Barofsky has become a lonely voice of dissent. It will shrink further soon. J.P. Morgan’s Dimon lashes out at Dodd-Frank. By Ronald D. Orol, MarketWatch WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., took another opportunity to bash the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law Tuesday, saying he believes the statute is hurting U.S. economic competitiveness. J.P. Reuters Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of J.P. Already on record as a critic of the sweeping 2010 law, Dimon targeted particular aspects that are in the process of being implemented.
“There are 400 rules being made now, and there are things in there that are downright idiotic,” Dimon said before the Council of Institutional Investors in Washington. He singled out provisions about the regulation of derivatives, the so-called Durbin rule — new interchange-fee rules for banks’ debit cards named for proponent Sen. /conga/story/misc/dc.html303446 “The spinout-of-derivatives provision is ridiculous, the Durbin amendment passed in the middle of the night and had nothing to do with the crisis,” Dimon said.
Republicans Ramp Up Attacks on Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Federal regulators are running out of time to write hundreds of new rules for Wall Street. Yet Republican lawmakers — and even some regulators — want to slow the pace. Representative Scott Garrett of New Jersey is the latest prominent Republican to rebuke the speed at which the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is writing rules. In a letter dated March 3 to the agency chairman, Gary Gensler, Mr. Garrett complained that a “rapid pace” prevented the financial industry from fully digesting proposed rules for derivatives trading. Mr. Republicans are threatening repercussions for regulators that ignore their concerns.
The Republican-led House of Representatives passed a federal spending plan in February that would cut the commission’s $168 million funding by a third. Mr. Mr. The public typically has 60 days to comment on commission proposals before the agency finalizes rules. The proposals are unlikely to please Republicans, no matter how long they circulate. Mr. Mr. Latham & Watkins LLP - Firm Publications - The Impact of CDS on Restructurings. The big deal about the NYSE's big deal: Derivatives - Fortune Finance. As regulators start to scrutinize the proposed combination of the NYSE and the Deutsche Börse, they'll need to take into account much more than just equity trading.
By Cyrus Sanati, contributor The battle for the soul of Wall Street continues as the fate of the New York Stock Exchange remains up in the air. The NYSE's tentative $10 billion sale to Germany's Deutsche Börse will need to pass through a regulatory gauntlet in the next few months, which could ensnarl the deal in red tape. Some fear that the proposed tie-up, along with a number of other exchange mergers in the works, could lead to a more volatile marketplace for equities, which they believe could lead to another "flash crash" or something even worse. But the business of trading has changed dramatically since the NYSE's heyday. In fact, the NYSE-Deutsche Börse deal has less to do with equity trading than it does with other parts of the business the exchanges need to maintain a competitive advantage: technology and derivatives.
Financial Information Services - Markit.com. SPECIAL REPORT - In derivatives trade, RIP OTC? To get a measure of what financial markets think about plans to make trading in derivatives more uniform and transparent, ask no further than the regulators themselves. Thomas Huertas, a senior UK Financial Services Authority official, said recently that unless the plans to centralise trillions of dollars' worth of contracts were thought through carefully, it could be a bit like "putting a Chernobyl in the back yard".
With its echo of Warren Buffett's description of derivatives themselves as "financial weapons of mass destruction", Huertas' choice of language reflects how potent the industry has become, not to mention hard to understand and difficult to tame. Yet that is just what regulators are trying to do, and they've got a fight on their hands. Big companies regularly use derivatives as a form of insurance to guard against jumps in the price of everything from cocoa to interest rates. For investment banks, this business is a high-margin, low-volume trade they are loath to lose. Orrick explains Dodd Frank on Derivatives. Goldman, Others Warn Of Swap Trade Concerns. ISDA - International Swaps and Derivatives Association, Inc.
Safe Harbors for Derivatives vs. Chapter 11. As I have noted before on DealBook, derivative contracts have a broad exception to the normal rules of bankruptcy, often called a safe harbor. Derivatives are not subject to the automatic stay, collateral collected on the eve of bankruptcy cannot be attacked as a preference, and derivative contracts are not subject to a debtor’s ability to assume or reject contracts unless the nondebtor counterparty consents.
As some readers undoubtedly know, I have long argued that the special treatment of derivatives under the Federal Bankruptcy Code is largely unjustified. I also helped Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, with an amendment to the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory act that would have rolled back this special treatment, but the amendment never received a floor vote. The World Bank held a forum on Tuesday on insolvency and creditor-debtor regimes, where I discussed how derivatives should be handled in corporate reorganization proceedings. AmericanWest’s Section 363 Filing Stephen J.