WASHINGTON, D.C.— Dennis Kelleher, President and CEO, issued the following statement regarding the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) recently released regulatory agenda: 

“The CFTC’s recently released fall 2022 regulatory agenda (available here) is virtually identical to its spring 2022 agenda (available here).  Don’t be fooled because the fall agenda has fewer items than the spring agenda. That’s mostly because the CFTC dropped an item off its fall 2022 rule list from its spring 2022 list.  This regulatory failure is inexcusable, particularly given Chair Behnam’s statement, when the Senate confirmed four CFTC Commissioners on March 29, 2022, that ‘The American people will be well served by having a full commission that can openly debate significant policy issues in an ever-changing derivatives and financial landscape.’  By that standard, the American people have not been ‘well served’ by the CFTC.

“Instead, the CFTC Chair spent his time in 2022 meeting with FTX and its CEO and pushing their regulatory and legislative priorities.  As was observed in the Financial Times, the CFTC ‘has consistently acted as a friendly champion of a fraud-riddled dumpster fire it purportedly wants to supervise’ and ‘the willingness of the CFTC to debase itself as a willing accomplice in the [regulatory arbitrage] process has been eye-catching.’  In stark contrast, in terms of its core mandates of regulating and policing the derivatives and commodities markets, the CFTC is AWOL.

“This lack of leadership, misguided priorities, and failures cannot continue in 2023. The CFTC needs to fulfill its critically important mission. In addition to completing its regulatory agenda this year, the CFTC should also conduct a thorough investigation of the commodities markets, which we urged the Chair to do throughout 2022 to no avail.  Every American depends on those markets for everything from cereal and bread to gas and aluminum. The CFTC is too important an agency for it to be AWOL. It is past time for it to get to work and, as the Chair promised, ‘openly debate significant policy issues.’”

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