Senator Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, called for the resignation of Gary Gensler, Chairman of the CFTC.
In light of the recent collapse of MF Global and PFGBest, Moran accused Gensler and the CFTC of being “asleep at the switch” during the crisis, stating “[m]aybe Gary Gensler needs to go.”
According to Moran, Gensler was distracted by his efforts to implement Dodd-Frank and thus neglected his core responsibilities as a regulator. “Chairman Gensler has seemingly been more preoccupied with his Dodd-Frank Act power grab than with his core responsibilities,” Moran said in a statement on Thursday.
Moran is a member of the Senate Banking Committee and the ranking Republican on the appropriations subcommittee that oversees the CFTC’s budget.
The CFTC maintains that it lacks the necessary funding to efficiently implement Dodd-Frank. But Moran dismissed that defense, saying that the recent failure of the CFTC to prevent the collapse of the two major future brokerages were not an issue of inadequate funding, but rather an issue of “prioritization and of resolve.”