Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Chicago Merc's Policing Assessed: The Chicago Mercantile Exchange and other futures markets should do a better job of cracking down on high-pressure telephone sales tactics at member firms, the staff of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said. The staff report praised the exchange for responding to earlier suggestions for improvement, but said more needs to be done to ensure that "investigative procedures adequately address the issue of detecting abusive oral sales representations."

U.S. regulators launched one of the biggest ever crackdowns on oil price manipulation Tuesday, suing two well-known traders and two trading firms owned by Norwegian billionaire John Fredriksen for allegedly making $50 million by squeezing markets in 2008. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said traders James Dyer of Oklahoma's Parnon Energy and Nick Wildgoose of Europe-based Arcadia Energy amassed large physical positions at a key U.S. trading hub to create the impression of tight supplies that would boost oil prices.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission will consider new measures to curb speculation in the markets for energy and other commodities, the agency is expected to announce today. Such a move, designed to reduce the volatility of prices, faces resistance from top Wall Street firms, which fear the effort could cut into their earnings. Regulators and lawmakers have expressed concern that these firms have used their size and power to inflate commodity prices, booking profits in the process.

Richard Jaycobs spent years preparing to bring Wall Street-style speculation to the high-risk world of Hollywood moviemaking. Lawmakers in Washington don't think it's such a good idea. Jaycobs is president of Cantor Exchange, a business set up by Wall Street trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald to create a market for trading futures contracts based on box-office results. Movie investors and traders would have been able to hedge a film by betting it would underperform or increase an investment by gambling on strong ticket sales.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has filed civil charges against two Southern California men, alleging that they ran a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that targeted Latinos, the commission announced Monday. Acting at the request of the commodities agency, U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson last week froze the assets of Ruben Gonzalez of West Covina and Jose C. Naranjo of La Mirada and their company, New Golden Investment Group. The defendants and the company could not be reached for comment.

President Reagan announced Wednesday that he intends to renominate Fowler West to be commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for a term expiring in April, 1992. West has been commissioner of the panel since 1982.

The European Commission opened an inquiry into whether an online service planned by America Online Inc., German media group Bertelsmann and Deutsche Telekom would be anti-competitive. . . . The chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Mary Schapiro, resigned to take a job as top regulator of the National Assn. of Securities Dealers Inc.

The Senate has confirmed Wendy Gramm as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to replace Susan Phillips. Gramm is administrator for information and regulatory affairs at the White House Office of Management and Budget. Sen. Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican, is her husband. The CFTC, located in Washington, oversees the nation's commodity futures exchanges.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has filed civil charges against two Southern California men, alleging that they ran a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that targeted Latinos, the commission announced Monday. Acting at the request of the commodities agency, U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson last week froze the assets of Ruben Gonzalez of West Covina and Jose C. Naranjo of La Mirada and their company, New Golden Investment Group. The defendants and the company could not be reached for comment.

After losing a major regulatory battle over proposed box office futures markets, the major movie studios are going to Congress. Financial reform legislation unveiled Friday by Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) contains a provision that would ban futures trading based on box office receipts. The move came the same day that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission unanimously approved the creation of one of two proposed markets that backers say would allow movie studios and financiers to hedge the risk of their investments in motion pictures.

Hollywood's big movie studios are trying to ensure that there's no future for box-office futures. The Motion Picture Assn. of America, the lobbying group that represents the six major film studios, has notified the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that it objects to two planned futures markets that would let investors essentially bet on what upcoming movies will gross at the box office. "The reputation and integrity of our industry could be tarnished by allowing trading in the movie futures contracts in a manner which allows them to be viewed as the economic equivalent of legalized gambling on movie receipts," said the letter, which was signed by the MPAA's interim chief executive, Bob Pisano.

Reporting from New York and Los Angeles -- Welcome to Hollywood's newest version of risky business: movie derivatives. Two trading firms, one of them an established Wall Street player and the other a Midwest upstart, are each about to premiere a sophisticated new financial tool: a box-office futures exchange that would allow Hollywood studios and others to hedge against the box-office performance of movies, similar to the way farmers swap corn...

The road to reforming financial regulations winds through the cornfields, hog farms and cattle ranches of America's heartland, and that complicates the Obama administration's already arduous effort to revamp oversight of Wall Street. Lawmakers from Iowa, Minnesota, Oklahoma and other farm-belt states who sit on the congressional agriculture committees have a surprisingly influential role in the administration's proposed overhaul, which Congress resumes debating Tuesday after its summer recess.

When a meltdown on Wall Street threatened the financial system in 1998, Gary G. Gensler helped orchestrate the rescue of Long-Term Capital Management, a big hedge fund that had set off the debacle with bad bets on exotic financial contracts known as derivatives. But once the smoke cleared, Gensler, then a newcomer at the Treasury Department, closed ranks with others in the Clinton administration who decided against subjecting derivatives to tighter regulation.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission will consider new measures to curb speculation in the markets for energy and other commodities, the agency is expected to announce today. Such a move, designed to reduce the volatility of prices, faces resistance from top Wall Street firms, which fear the effort could cut into their earnings. Regulators and lawmakers have expressed concern that these firms have used their size and power to inflate commodity prices, booking profits in the process.

Federal prosecutors say two principals of a foreign-currency trading firm have been arrested on suspicion of operating a Ponzi-like scheme that cost customers $15 million. Charles G. Martin, 43, of Malibu was arrested Tuesday in the Los Angeles area and John Walsh, 60, was arrested Wednesday in Illinois. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago. Prosecutors say Martin and Walsh, as principals of One World Capital Group, diverted millions of investor dollars to pay for lavish lifestyles.