| JUNE 12, 2010 -- National Grange and the Commodity Markets Oversight Coalition recently urged U.S. Senate leadership to include the "Wall Street Transparency and Accountability Act," in the "American Financial Stability Act" (S.3217) - otherwise known as the comprehensive "Wall Street Reform" bill.
The National Grange and the Coalition believes that policy in the commodity trading markets should aim to strengthen oversight, transparency, and stability and to address inadequacies in the existing financial markets for both regulated markets like stock markets and futures contracts markets as well as unregulated, privately traded, bilateral, contractual, and financial products, generally known as "derivatives". To this end, the proposed legislation constitutes the most reform-minded legislative proposal to date. Written under the leadership of U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Sen. Blanche Lincoln, this legislation makes significant improvements over current inadequate regulatory programs and brings greater public accountability to all financial product markets, included those privately traded.
The National Grange and the Coalition believes this legislation may be Congress' best opportunity to pass meaningful reform of the financial markets, to address excessive speculation to prevent market fraud and abuse, and to prevent a recurrence of a market bubble and subsequent collapse that nearly brought down the entire American economy.
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