News

Leery of mounting a frontal assault on Wall Street reforms, House Republicans have opted for a guerrilla-style war on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission even as it struggles with a new mandate to regulate the famously rich and wild swaps market. Just Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee approved the latest in a series of legislative efforts to challenge the CFTC’s rule making on trading in derivatives. Despite its new responsibilities, the agency’s budget has been effectively frozen at the insistence of the House GOP. And amid the MF Global investigation, Republicans wrote CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler on Monday, demanding that he turn over a broad array of relevant records as early as Wednesday.