He Who Makes the Rules

Kannu

Here's an excellent article on how the process of lawmaking happens. Or not as the case maybe. And all parts are important as its important all parties are heard. 

So now you see why financial institutions pay such close attention to what's going on in government. It can literally be the reason for success or failure. 

there is another quote which is relevant in these days, In democracy, its not the count of the vote which is important but also its important to know who counts the vote. That’s why an independent election commission is so vital. Unfortunately, we don't have something like that and therefore we end up with legal gymnastics like this. And this is the reason why I am sceptical of more regulation making economies safer.

Love

Baba

The Washington Monthly - The Magazine - He Who Makes the Rules
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_2013/features/he_who_makes_the_rules043315.php?page=all

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Barack Obama’s biggest second-term challenge isn’t guns or immigration. It’s saving his biggest first-term achievements, like the Dodd-Frank law, from being dismembered by lobbyists and conservative jurists in the shadowy, Byzantine “rule-making” process.

In late 2010, Bart Chilton, one of three Democratic commissioners at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), walked into an upper-floor suite of an executive office building to meet with four top muckety-mucks at one of the biggest financial institutions in the world.

There were a handful of staff members present, but it was a pretty small gathering—one, it turns out, that Chilton would never forget.

The main topic Chilton hoped to discuss that day was the CFTC’s pending rule on what are known as “position limits.” If implemented properly, position limits would put a leash on speculation in the commodities market by making it harder for heavyweight traders at places like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase to corner a market, make a killing for themselves, and screw up prices for the rest of us. Position limits are also one of many ways to tamp down the amount of risk big institutions can take on, which keeps them from going belly up and minimizes the chance taxpayers will have to bail them out.

The financial institution Chilton was meeting with that day was a big commodities exchange, which is like a stock exchange except that instead of trading stocks they trade derivatives based on the value of actual products, like oil and gas. Chilton wouldn’t say which major commodities exchange he was meeting with that day, but suffice it to say two of the biggest—the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Intercontinental Exchange—have a lot to lose from federally administered position limits. To them, the more derivatives traded, the better. They’ve been fighting the CFTC’s attempts to establish position limits for years.

The passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in July 2010 seemed to promise meaningful reform on this front. The law includes Section 737, which explicitly directs the CFTC to establish position limits and lays out detailed guidelines on how they should do so. “The Commission shall by rule, regulation or order establish limits on the amount of positions, as appropriate,” it reads.

Still, even with the strength of the law behind him, Chilton waited until the end of the meeting to broach what he knew would be a tense subject. He began diplomatically. Now that the CFTC was required by law to establish position limits, his commission wanted to do so “in a fashion that made sense—one that was sensitive to, but not necessarily reflective of, the views of the exchange,” he told the executives.

Chilton’s gracious overture fell flat. His hosts, who had been openly discussing other topics moments before, were suddenly silent. They deferred instead to their top lawyer, who explained that the exchange’s interpretation of Section 737 was that the CFTC was not required to establish position limits at all.

Chilton was blindsided. While other parts of Dodd-Frank were, admittedly, vague and ambiguous and otherwise frustrating to those, like him, who were tasked with writing the hundreds of rules associated with the act, Section 737 didn’t exactly pull any punches. The Commission shall establish limits on the amount of positions, as appropriate.

“You gotta be kidding,” Chilton told the executives. “The law is very clear here. The congressional intent
is clear.”

But the executives stood their ground. Their lawyer quietly referred Chilton to the end of the sentence in question: as appropriate. Those two little words, the lawyer said, clearly modify the verb “shall.” Therefore, the statute can be interpreted as saying that the commission shall—but only if appropriate—establish position limits, he explained.