The Chicago Fed letter discusses the need for risk controls at every step of the trading process (i.e., at trading firms, broker-dealers, futures commission merchants, exchanges and clearinghouses). The letter outlines some controls that might have aided in mitigating the recent losses related to high-speed trading, including: (1) limits on the number of orders that can be sent to an exchange within a specified period of time; (2) a "kill switch" that could stop trading at one or more levels; (3) intraday position limits that set the maximum position a firm can take during one day; and (4)

CME Group announced it will launch deliverable Interest Rate Swap Futures contracts on November 13, 2012. The contracts will be listed on, and subject to, the rules and regulations of CBOT and will be submitted to and reviewed by the CFTC. According to CME, Interest Rate Swap Futures fill a gap in the rates market, as they will allow clients to access swap exposure while providing cross-margining. Lofchie Comment: The product illustrates again the eccentricity of subjecting "swaps" to extremely burdensome regulations as compared to "futures," where the products are essentially similar. To find

SEC has changed instructions for payments submitted to the U.S. Treasury bank account number and ABA number as of October 1st, 2012. Filing Fee payments prior to October 1st, 2012 Filing Fee payments on and after October 1st, 2012

The Municipal Bond Summit is being held at the Conrad New York Hotel in New York City on October 1st, 2012. Program topics include electoral politics, developments in the secondary market, municipal bond indices, trends affecting the variable-rate market as well as the SEC road map for the Municipal Market. View release in full here (links externally to SIFMA website).

The OCC has issued a bulletin providing national banks and federal savings associations (collectively, banks) with guidance on appropriate credit risk management practices for investor-owned, one- to four-family residential real estate (IORR) lending where the primary repayment source for the loan is rental income. The bulletin is intended to promote consistent risk management practices and to summarize the applicable requirements for such lending, noting that repayment sources for IORR loans may be volatile and highly leveraged. The bulletin addresses, among other topics, the OCC's