The Commodity Markets Oversight Coalition has filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia in support of a Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s rule that would limit speculative trading in commodities. A District Court judge vacated the CFTC rule to impose speculative position limits on futures and swaps for 28 listed commodities last September in response to a legal challenge by Wall Street groups. The judge cited an ambiguous Congressional mandate and CFTC’s failure to determine if it should have made a finding of necessity before promulgating the final rule. In the brief – the coalition supports the CFTC’s position that Congress mandated a rule setting speculative position limits.
According to the brief – Congress had been gathering evidence for nearly a decade about excessive speculation and had already concluded that excessive speculation constituted an undue burden on interstate commerce. The coalition states Congress had studied and identified a serious crisis that it wanted remedied quickly – and therefore mandated position limits. The coalition also points to the requirement by Congress that regulators conduct an expedited rulemaking process – as well as the fact that lawmakers required a study into the effect of position limits one year after they had been imposed. The coalition says there should be no doubt Congress was mandating swift and decisive action to end what it believed was a serious problem.
National Farmers Union is part of the Commodity Markets Oversight Coalition.
Source: NAFB News Service