CFTC Commissioners O’Malia and Sommers strongly disapproved of the agency’s final rules regarding swap dealer (“SD”) and major swap participant (“MSP”) record keeping and reporting requirements. The Commission approved the rules February 23 by a 3-2 vote. Scott O’Malia critiqued what he saw a “glaring failure” to develop a quantitative cost-benefit analysis of the rules, as required under the Commodity Exchange Act.

In his statements, he said, “Our inability to develop a quantitative analysis, or to develop a reasonable comparative analysis of legitimate options, hurts the credibility of this Commission and undermines the quality of our rules.”

Commissioner Sommers called many of the requirements “duplicative,” and said that she did not believe the rules would “withstand the test of time.”

She said she “believed that this Commissionwill be consumed over the next few years using our valuable resources to rewrite rules that we knew or should have known would not work when we issued them.”

Chairman Gensler and Commissioners Chilton and Wetjen supported the rules over O’Mailia and Sommers defense. The CFTC has not yet released the final rules.

Read more about the Commissioners statements.

Photo cred: Brittany Hogan