Gary Gensler surprised everyone when, as head of the CFTC, he actually enforced sensible rules.<\/p>\n
So it it comes no surprise that Obama is firing him and replacing him with a corporate drone from the Vampire Squid<\/a>:<\/p>\n Obama is no longer bothering to pretend that he is anything other than a stooge for banks and other big money interests.<\/span>
<\/span> The president is effectively dismissing Gary Gensler, the ex-Goldman partner who headed the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. Gensler used his post at a secondary financial regulator to push for reforms. It was his office that blew the Libor scandal wide open by taking referrals from British regulators seriously (by contrast, Geithner, who heard about widespread, deliberate mismarking in 2008, passed the buck to the Bank of England). Gensler has also been making himself unpopular by taking the view that swap dealers, which includes foreign branches of US banks and parties that conduct business with US parties, must comply with Dodd Frank. \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>
<\/span> Shahien Nasiripour at the Huffington Post describes how Gensler is being ousted for his position on swaps regulation, which was coming to a head in international meetings starting June 20, with a July 12 deadline looming. The industry was pushing for the usual \u201crace to the bottom\u201d approach, since the Dodd Frank provisions are more stringent than overseas requirments (the spin, of course, was that Gensler was acting unilaterally, as opposed to implementing what Congress mandated). Gensler faces varying degrees of resistance from three of his four fellow commissioners. International regulators were apparently also unhappy with Gensler\u2019s tough stand, to the point where they were complaining to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.<\/span>
<\/span> Even if Obama fails in fast-tracking his chosen replacement, Amanda Renteria, Gensler\u2019s lame-duck status will considerably weaken his ability to arm-twist the fence-sitters among his colleagues.<\/span>
<\/span> And Renteria is a simply pathetic choice. Oh, she\u2019s got a very appealing personal story, having worked her way up from a very disadvantaged background, a child of migrant workers who made her way to Stanford and later Harvard Business School. But there\u2019s nothing in her background that qualifies her to act either as a senior regulator or as the head of a large operation (the CFTC has over 400 employees). This leap in responsibilities is tantamount to taking a promising law firm associate and making them the head of a large law practice. You\u2019d never do that if you cared about the health of the firm. A move like this looks an awful lot like an effort not just to sideline Gensler\u2019s push on swaps regulation, but to render the CFTC incompetent over time.<\/span>
<\/span> Renteria\u2019s knowledge of finance appears to consist of having worked right after college for a few years at Goldman. \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n