Incoming Repub. Sets Sites on Regulators: Keep Your Hands Off My Margin

As CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton chomps at the bit to get new position limits in place as of...well, yesterday, and Chairman Gary Gensler suggests mid-January 2011 might be too ambitious (but he'll try real hard), incoming chair of the "powerful US Congressional House Financial Services Committee", Spencer Bachus is happy to play obstructionist. And none too soon, as we had finally begun to hear the ominous sucking sound warned of by the Texas entrepreneur cum 1990's presidential candidate. And not with respect to jobs, but of an entire segment of the trading universe, as derivatives traders (including futures traders) are more prone to being agnostic as to their trading instruments and venues. GFS News reports:

In a letter seen by GFS News, Spencer Bachus warns Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Mary Schapiro, Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman Gary Gensler and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke that implementing the Dodd-Frank Act "hastily or without due care" risks badly damaging the US economy.

The Republican from Alabama urges policy makers to reject attempts to force end-users to post margin requirements, to carefully consider swap dealer and security-based swap participant definitions and to ensure that foreign exchange swaps and forwards are exempt from clearing and exchange trading requirements.

"As our economy slowly recovers, we have serious concerns that Dodd-Frank will force American companies, which did not cause nor contribute to the financial crisis, to move billions of dollars in capital onto the sidelines to comply with the law," Bachus wrote in the letter, which is dated last week.

Whether this is mere base-pandering theater that will be dropped over chasers at La Lomita remains to be seen. But, Bachus may have bought a few months for what remains of Mr. Market.