This is the first no-action letter that the CFTC issued with regard to CPO delegations under the streamlined approach of CFTC Letter 14-69. CFTC Letter 14-71 was issued swiftly under the streamlined approach of CFTC Letter 14-69, which was issued only seven days ago (on May 12). Given the number of CPO delegation request letters that the CFTC is likely to receive in the near future, the CFTC may find it difficult to maintain that turnaround time. Further, the CFTC response letter was brief,…

Chair Wetjen was forthright as to why the CFTC's budget needs have expanded substantially:

"The notional value of derivatives centrally cleared by clearing houses was $124 trillion in 2010 (according to ISDA data), and is now approximately $223 trillion (according to CFTC data from swap data repositories ('SDRs')). That is nearly a 100 percent increase. The expanded use of clearinghouses is significant in this context because, among other things, it means that the Commission must…

The CFTC should lose this suit as a matter of law. In many ways, though, the CFTC would benefit from such a loss, which would allow it to walk away from a material part of the flawed rulemaking and restart with a better approach. As things are progressing, the agency may have no choice. The House of Representatives today passed a bipartisan bill (supported by both the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Agriculture Committee) that would effectively render the guidance moot…

Prior to the SEC's class no-action relief, non-U.S. options exchanges that sought to make their equity and index options available to U.S. investors were required to obtain individual no-action relief from the SEC. The SEC issued several such letters to non-U.S. options exchanges over the years concerning largely the same conditions. Given the similarity of these letters, the SEC issued class no-action relief to non-U.S. options exchanges in July 2013, thereby relieving the exchanges of the…