James A. Leach: “Last year, after nearly 2 decades of work, the United States Congress passed the Financial Modernization Act to bring…”

“Last year, after nearly 2 decades of work, the United States Congress passed the Financial Modernization Act to bring our Nation's banking and securities laws in line with the realities of the marketplace. In the few days left for legislation in this Congress, an analogous opportunity presents itself to modernize the Commodity Exchange Act that governs the trading of futures and options. At issue is the question of whether an appropriate regulatory framework can be established to deal not only with certain problems that confront today's risk management markets, but new dilemmas that appear on the horizon. Legislation of this nature involves different committees with different concerns and sometimes competitive jurisdictional interests. From the perspective of the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, I would like to express my respect for the initial Committee on Agriculture product. That Committee's product, led by the gentleman from Texas (Chairman Combest) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Ewing), reflected a credible way of dealing with a number of concerns that have developed during much of the last of the decade as derivatives-related products have grown. Nonetheless, the Committee on Banking and Financial Services believes that some modifications to H.R. 4541 were in order; and in July, a number of clarifying approaches were adopted on a bipartisan manner.”