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Good afternoon Chairman Durbin, Ranking Member Collins and members of the Subcommittee. I thank you for inviting me to testify today. I am pleased to testify on behalf of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)
With the help of this Subcommittee, the CFTC has increased staffing levels to approximately 600 staff. This is roughly the same as our staffing levels in the early 1990s. In 2007, we hit historic staffing lows of 437 staff. We believe that we need 745 staff to fully meet our mission to protect investors and promote transparency.
The CFTC ensures that futures exchanges have procedures to protect market participants and ensure fair and orderly trading. The CFTC also oversees clearinghouses, which act as middlemen between two parties to a transaction and take on the risk that one counterparty to the trade may fail to meet its obligations. We regulate intermediaries, such as futures commission merchants, commodity pool operators and commodity trading advisors who deal with the public. The CFTC has wideranging transparency efforts and surveillance powers to police the markets for fraud, manipulation and other abuses.
Though our staffing levels are only slightly higher than they were ten years ago, futures trading volume increased almost five-fold. The number of actively traded futures and options contracts increased seven-fold.
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