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President Barack Obama is poised to nominate Amanda Renteria, a former Senate staffer, to replace Gary Gensler atop the main U.S. derivatives regulator amid an intensifying fight between Gensler and the world’s major banks and regulators over cross-border transactions.
[h=2]Obama should not chase CFTC-head Gary Gensler away[/h]
Renteria’s elevation would end Gensler’s tenure as the nation’s top derivatives overseer. A former Goldman Sachs executive who was viewed skeptically by some liberal lawmakers when he was first nominated in 2009, Gensler has become perhaps Wall Street’s leading foe as he has sought to curb risk and expand transparency and competition in the previously opaque market for a type of derivatives known as swaps.
Gensler has transformed a once-unknown agency to one at the forefront of financial regulation as CFTC rules are shaking up a marketplace unaccustomed to government supervision. His rules threaten to decrease profits at the nation’s largest banks as formerly unregulated activities are forced to comply with provisions that help buyers compare prices and compel banks to stump up more cash to back their trades.
One of the administration’s longest-serving regulators, Gensler has clashed with the Treasury Department, foreign regulators from countries including the United Kingdom and Japan, dozens of U.S. lawmakers and the leading world banks over his efforts to impose stringent rules on a once little-regulated market that fueled the financial crisis and nearly toppled financial groups including AIG, the giant U.S. insurer.
Gensler Staring Down Administration and Banks on Derivatives Reform
Readers may recall that Gary Gensler, the head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, is being pushed out by Obama. His planned replacement is so appallingly lightweight (oh, and formerly in a very junior role at Goldman) as to assure that all she’ll be able to do is take dictation from financial firm lobbyists.