The CFTC and Issues in Commodity Futures

Congress created the Commodity Futures Trade Commission (CFTC) in 1974 as an independent agency with the mandate to regulate commodity futures and options markets in the United States. The CFTC's mission is two-fold: to protect the public and market users from manipulation fraud, and abusive practices; and to ensure open, competitive and financially sound markets for commodity futures and options. These markets play a critical role in the U.S. economy by providing risk management tools that producers, distributors, and commercial users of commodities use to protect themselves from unpredictable price changes. The futures markets are also designed to discover prices that accurately reflect information on supply, demand and other factors. This book examines the different issues surrounding how commodity-index futures trading is addressed by various laws and regulations and their effect on commodity prices; the regulation of energy derivatives; an overview of commodity swap dealers and index traders; and the economic purpose of the futures markets and how they work. This book consists of public documents which have been located, gathered, combined, reformatted, and enhanced with a subject index, selectively edited and bound to provide easy access.