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We are going to sort out the US financial system. This might seem a bold statement when, two and a half years after the Dodd-Frank Act was signed into law, much necessary regulation is still not on the books. But with the re-election of Barack Obama, I have no doubt that the necessary new rules will be in place in good time. While I share the frustration that many feel about our slow progress, I do not share the angst that often accompanies it. Some of the factors responsible for the pace were inherent in the task.

Some critics have complained that we overloaded the agencies’ circuits with a law that was much too long. The 124-page Dodd-Frank Act is, sceptics note, rather longer than the 30 pages of Glass-Steagall, the financial reform bill passed in 1933 in the wake of the Wall Street crash. But our bill covered more subjects.

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Ice Clear Credit has been forced by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to reverse a decision not to offer client clearing for single-name credit default swaps (CDSs). The central counterparty (CCP) announced that decision last month, blaming it on a new margin policy unveiled by the SEC, but the agency is understood to have told Ice that the company's own rules require it to accept the trades for clearing.

"The SEC has interpreted Ice's rules – in particular 309(g) – as requiring it to accept single-name trades for clearing, and said that if it insists on not clearing, then it would have to submit a rule change. So Ice is going to go ahead and clear all client-traded single names submitted starting April 15," says one clearing expert at a global bank.

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Ice Clear Credit has shelved plans to clear single-name credit default swaps (CDSs) for clients of its member firms, as a result of a new Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) policy on portfolio margining. Under the terms of that policy, circulated late on March 8 – the last working day before the start of mandatory clearing for CDX index trades in the US – clients would be able to benefit from risk offsets between cleared index and single-name contracts, but the vast majority would be charged twice the margin calculated by a central counterparty (CCP).

The move sparked a furious response from some buy-side firms and has now dissuaded Ice's CDS clearing house from offering the service at all.