http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gensler
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=whats_the_problem_with_gary_gensler
As Congress returns from its spring recess this week, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) -- which is poised to gain new authority over the risky financial instruments known as derivatives -- remains without a permanent chair.
The controversy plaguing the White House's choice to lead the CFTC, Gary Gensler, began last month when Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont blocked a floor vote on the nomination and suggested Gensler was not the "independent leader" needed to "create a new culture in the financial marketplace." Gensler's biggest sin, for Sanders, was helping to pass the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) of 2000, a bill that kept the derivatives market out of regulators' reach.
Gensler has offered a mea culpa to smooth his path to confirmation by vowing to steer the CFTC toward meaningful regulation of derivatives. Unfortunately, the political jockeying over his past has obscured the key question: What is the best way to regulate the sprawling derivatives market?
After retiring at age 39 from Goldman Sachs, the derivatives-mad firm that has profited nicely from the government's multiple financial bailouts, Gensler came to the Clinton Treasury Department. There he worked on CFMA, the bill that allowed the derivatives market to metastasize into a hotbed of financial risk with an estimated value -- before last fall's financial crash -- exceeding the world's real financial holdings.
