Screaming Ends, Gensler Confirmed for CFTC

This week Gary Gensler finally got the OK to head up the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who'd blocked Mr. Gensler's approval for months, decided to wave him through after all.

Mr. Sanders had bashed Mr. Gensler, a former Clinton Treasury official, for being soft on derivatives regulation back in the late 90s. But Gensler called this a mistake, and now that the administration has promised to smack those unruly derivatives upside the head, it's all good.

Oddly, the last time Gensler made people really mad on the subject of regulation, it was for taking a bold pro-regulation stance. In 2000, the man singlehandedly "roiled the agency debt market" (in the words of a Wall Street advocacy organization*) by supporting a Republican House member's push to - gasp! - take away some of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's ultra-cool government-sponsored privileges. But in the imaginary American Idol for lobbyists, Fannie and Freddie's advocates used to pack more star power than Adam Lambert. So the bill to rein in the GSEs died, and Gensler got hammered.

The point being: Mr. Gensler isn't an ideological deregulator. And he's now taken more bashing from members of Congress than Lil Rounds got from Simon Cowell (although I don't think anyone on the Senate Agriculture Committee made fun of what Gensler was wearing).

In fact, Gensler will probably compensate for his past regulatory sins by injecting an Adam Lambert-like intensity into his performance as CFTC head. I'll happily lend the new Chairman some eyeliner, if that's what it takes to get the derivatives markets under control.


* This was a quote from The Bond Market Association, now part of SIFMA. I worked there at the time.

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