NYMEX Expresses Outrage At House Passage Of H.R. 4541

In response to passage by the House of Representatives last night of H.R. 4541, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, New York Mercantile Exchange Chairman Daniel Rappaport issued the following statement: The New York Mercantile Exchange finds it particularly egregious that, by approving subsection (g) (3) of Section 106, the House would not only remove the energy and metals marketplaces from public scrutiny and regulatory oversight, but also do this in a fashion that discriminates between established markets versus start-up electronic forums.

It is particularly outrageous, at a time when every U.S. consumer is feeling the impact of high energy prices, to allow lobbying by a small group of vested interests to influence Congress to take these markets out of the public eye and create an advantage for people to trade on private, proprietary systems lacking the protections of a neutral self-regulatory organization. Policy makers, regulators, and the American public will be deprived of currently available information on market participation, concentration, and financial performance.

This is not only a matter of ill-conceived public policy but is also anti-competitive and directly contrary to the recommendations made by the President'sWorking Group on financial markets.

Even House members who voted in favor of the bill have been publicly quoted as saying that it must be changed in the Senate.

The New York Mercantile Exchange plans to fight adamantly at the Senate level to demand that this subsection either be eliminated or be amended to create a consistent regulatory policy for electronic and open outcry markets.