The Shutdown Has Closed This Important Market Regulator – And It Could Prove to Be Serious
Congress’ inability to come to an agreement on a short-term spending bill caused the U.S. government to shut down Tuesday, forcing it to close, among other things, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
This could be a serious problem. See, the CFTC regulates the futures and options markets, which include precious metals, energy, currency, and currency indexes.
In other words, they’re sheriffs who keep an eye on some of Wall Street’s biggest money movers. And the futures and options markets are currently operating without federal regulation.
“I can’t spend any [agency] money,” said Bart Chilton, commissioner, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, at the annual Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) conference in New York City, which TheBlaze attended.
“We had three hours on Tuesday to an actual shutdown at the CFTC. When that three hours was up, we received an email,” he said. “It said, ‘you may be fined for logging onto your CFTC website or using your personal laptop.’”
CFTC employees could be fined “up to $5,000 for logging on. You may not do any work. You may be terminated if you do U.S. government work,’” Chilton continued, citing the email.
