Commodity Futures Trading Commission November 2, 2010 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (``Commission'' or ``CFTC'') is proposing rules to implement new statutory provisions enacted by Title IX of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. These proposed rules apply to futures commission merchants, designated clearing organizations and commodity pool operators. The proposed rules implement the new statutory framework that requires agencies to replace any reference to or reliance on credit ratings in their regulations with an appropriate alternative standard.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (``Commission'' or ``CFTC'') is proposing reporting regulations that are reasonably necessary for implementing and enforcing aggregate position limits for certain physical commodity derivatives. As a result of recent legislative reforms, the Commission may adopt regulations establishing aggregate position limits for designated contract market (``DCM'') physical commodity futures contracts and swaps that are economically equivalent to such contracts. The Commission currently receives, and uses for market surveillance purposes, including position limit enforcement, data on large positions in all physical commodity futures and option contracts traded on DCMs. However, there is no analogous reporting structure in place for economically equivalent swaps, which until recently were largely unregulated financial contracts. The Commission's proposal would require position reports on economically equivalent swaps from clearing organizations, their members and swap dealers. Notably, the proposed regulations also include a sunset provision. The sunset provision would render the regulations ineffective upon the Commission's issuance of an order finding that operating swap data repositories (``SDRs'') are capable of processing positional data in a manner that would enable the Commission to set and enforce aggregate position limits.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (Commission or CFTC) is proposing rules to implement new statutory provisions enacted by Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. These proposed rules apply to the review of swaps by the Commission to determine whether the swaps are required to be cleared.