Obama press release: CFTC and SEC to be merged into the SRMA
Just found this at the White House site:
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release April 1st, 2012
A bill to rationalise US financial services regulation
CREATION OF THE STRATEGIC RULE MAKING AUTHORITY President Barak Obama announced today his intention to introduce a bill to Congress to eliminate the duplicated regulatory infrastructure that has dogged reform of the financial markets. Obama said "Safeguarding the American people from Wall Street has never been higher on my agenda, this bill will streamline how we control the activities of 'too big to fail' banking organisations, and downsize them to organisations which are 'small enough to go under'". in a statement released today. Interim head of the SRMA will be Peter M. Rouse, Counselor to President Barack H. Obama, having previously served as Interim Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor. He was a co-chair of the Obama-Biden Transition Project, a senior adviser to President Obama's campaign, and chief of staff to then-Senator Barack Obama. Peter M. Rouse said in response to his appointment as interim head of the SRMA, "The confusion surrounding banking reform will be swept away under my care, rule making will be increased and overlapping rules between the CFTC and SEC combined into one rule for each previously duplicated rule". Gary Gensler, current chairman of the CFTC and Mary L. Schapiro, current Chairman of the SEC issued a joint statement: "Whilst we have enjoyed hegemony in our respective domains of financial activity, now is the time to put aside our differences and accelerate progress towards a new financial system which is safer, sounder and smoother at delivering the benefits of the financial markets to the American public." Peter M. Rouse announced his first interim commissioner appointment of Bart Chilton to the office of product renaming. Bart Chilton in response issued this statement: "I am proud to be at the forefront of the creation of the SRMA, my mandate from Chairman Rouse is to oversee the renaming of the over-complex and confusingly named OTC product set, to something the average american can understand. Product names such as the 'snowball' will be a thing of the past, in future simply called the 'interest rate gathering sequential compounding lookback reverse swap." President Obama expects the SRMA and the merger process of the CFTC and SEC to be complete by December 31st 2015, with the complete merger of all rules finalised by December 31st 2021.