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"Unreasonably Feeble"
Opening Statement of Commissioner Scott D. O'Malia Regarding Open Meeting on One Final Rule and One Proposed Rule1
February 23, 2012--Introduction
The latest issue of The Economist features an article titled "Over-regulated America"2 that features as its archetype for excessive and badly-written regulation our own Dodd-Frank Act.
The problem, the article points out, is that rules that sound reasonable on their own may impose a huge collective burden due, in part, to their complexity. Part of the problem is that we, as The Economist points out, are under the impression that we can anticipate and regulate for every eventuality. In our hubris, The Economist warns, our overreaching tends to defeat our good intentions and creates loopholes and perhaps unintentional safe-harbors, leaving our rules ineffectual and subject to abuse. The solution The Economist offers isn’t so unfamiliar, at least to this Commissioner. It is rather simple. It is just that: Rules need to be simple. Echoing President Obama’s 2011 Executive Order 13563 “Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review”3 (which applies equally to independent federal agencies such as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the “Commission” or “CFTC”) per a subsequent Executive Order4), The Economist advises that we ought to cut out the verbiage and focus on writing rules that articulate broad goals and prescribe only what is strictly necessary to achieve them.
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Source: CFTC.gov
CFTC Staff to Host a Two-Day Public Roundtable to Discuss Additional Customer Collateral Protections
February 23, 2012--The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced that staff will hold a two-day public roundtable to discuss additional customer collateral protection.
The roundtable is to gather public input on a variety of ideas to further protect customers. The agenda for the roundtable is listed below.
Specifically, day one discussions will focus on issues related to the advisability and practicality of implementing the legal segregation with operational commingling (LSOC) model as the segregation model for collateral posted by futures customers (the Commission has already approved this model for swaps); alternative models for the custody of customer collateral; enhancing futures commission merchant (FCM) controls over the disbursement of customer funds deposited for trading on U.S. futures markets; increasing transparency surrounding an FCM’s holding and investment of customer funds; and lessons learned from commodity brokerage bankruptcy proceedings.
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Source: CFTC.gov
The Bank of New York Mellon Selected As Statewide Custody Provider
February 23, 2012 - The Washington State Treasurer's Office has selected The Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon) as the next statewide securities custody provider. This appointment is effective April 1, 2012, through March 31, 2016, with an optional three-year extension.
The custody program allows local governments to get the best rate and terms from a single financial institution for custody banking services. It offers significant time savings for local entities because they don’t have to prepare and evaluate requests for proposals (RFPs) or negotiate contracts.
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Source: Washington State Treasurer
U.S. equity funds again have net outflows -Lipper
February 23, 2012--U.S. fund investors sold domestic-focused equities in the week ended Feb. 22, a second
straight week in which selling far outweighed the net new cash
flowing into foreign-focused funds, data from Thomson Reuters' Lipper showed on Thursday.
In the latest week, investors pulled a net $2.8 billion from U.S.-domiciled equity funds. Domestic-focused funds accounted for the entire burden of outflows with $3.73 billion in net
redemptions.
In the course of the reporting week, the U.S. benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 stock index rose 1.07 percent.
Exchange traded funds reported net outflows of just over $4 billion. The State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF saw net redemptions of $4.64 billion.
"Most of the flows were pushed by ETFs. We actually saw an inflow into mutual funds, which may be a little bit of a lag on the retail side," said Matthew Lemieux, analyst at Lipper.
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Source: Reuters
CFTC plan sheds light on delays for block trades
February 23, 2012--The U.S. futures regulator on Thursday approved a measure that provides more insight on when dealers can delay reporting large over the counter swap transactions with sensitive price and size information to the public.
However, Republican commissioners at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission warned that poor quality data used in the proposed new rule was "troubling" and could serve to undermine efforts by the agency to boost swaps transparency.
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Source: CFTC.gov
Legg Mason files with the SEC
February 23, 2012--Legg Mason has filed a pre-effective amendment, registration statement with the SEC for the Legg Mason ETF Trust, an actively-managed ETF.
view filing
Source: SEC.gov
ETRACS Reports Technology Sector Top Performer: Solid State Drive ETN Leads Technology Exchange Traded Products with a 29.97% YTD Return
February 23, 2012--UBS Investment Bank today announced that the ETRACS ISE Solid State Drive Index ETN (Ticker: SSDD, NYSE), linked to the ISE Solid State Drive Index, is the top performing technology exchange-traded product ("ETP")* year-to-date, significantly outperforming all other US-listed, non-leveraged and non-inverse exchange-traded notes ("ETNs") and exchange-traded funds ("ETFs")
such as the Vanguard Information Technology ETF (Ticker: VGT, NYSE), Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (Ticker: XLK, NYSE), iShares Dow Jones U.S. Technology Sector Index Fund (Ticker: IYW, NYSE) and iShares S&P Global Technology Sector Index Fund (Ticker: IXN, NYSE).
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Source: ETRACS
SPDR ETF Family Announces Impact of Receiving Settlement Payments
February 23, 2012--The SPDR Morgan Stanley Technology ETF today announced that the fund received payment as an authorized claimant from a class action settlement related to Juniper Networks, Inc.
The total amount payable to the Fund is listed below. When the Fund calculates its net asset value (“NAV”) per share on Friday, February 24, 2012, it is estimated that the Fund’s NAV will be impacted by the receipt of the corresponding payment in the amount stated below based on the shares outstanding as of February 22, 2012.
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Source: SPDR Exchange Traded Funds
ALPS files with the SEC
February 23, 2012--ALPS has filed a post-effective amendment, registration statement with the SEC.
view filing
Source: SEC.gov
Global X files with the SEC
February 23, 2012--Global X has filed a post-effective amendment, registration statement with the SEC for the
Global X FTSE Nordic Region ETF
Global X FTSE Norway 30 ETF
and
Global X FTSE Denmark 20 ETF1*
Global X FTSE Finland 25 ETF2*
view filing
Source: SEC.gov
