With painful lessons from the demise of MF Global and Peregrine Financial Group still fresh, and amid continuing efforts to recover millions of dollars desperately shuffled around as they collapsed, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission this week approved new rules for futures brokers that are intended to protect customer funds from being plundered.
By a vote of 3-1, the CFTC formalized commodity trading rules first proposed nearly a year ago. Republican Commissioner Scott O’Malia was the dissenting vote, siding with concerns expressed by brokers, farmers and others in the agricultural sector that the new requirements are too costly and would harm the marketplace.
