The Commodity Futures Trading Commission ("CFTC") has once again solicited public comment on its controversial positions limits rule. OSEC submitted a comment letter to the CFTC taking exception with the proposal's broadly permissive provisions for hedging and the agency's failure to adequately regulate commodities speculation in non-spot months.

Occupy the SEC filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of New York against six federal agencies (Federal Reserve, Department of Treasury, SEC, CFTC, OCC and FDIC), over those agencies' delay in promulgating a Final Rulemaking in connection with the "Volcker Rule."

Money market funds were left out of the Dodd-Frank Act, and remain a source of systemic risk to the U.S. economy. The Financial Stability Oversight Council is using its authority to drive regulation for the first time since its creation by the Dodd-Frank Act, leading OSEC to get involved in the process of commenting on new proposed regulations. Presently, we are engaged in drafting a Comment Letter on three proposed solutions to money market reform.

In October 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on three consolidated cases, Chadbourne Chadbourne & Parke LLP v. Troice, Willis of Colorado Inc. v. Troice and Proskauer Rose LLP v. Troice. The cases relate to the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act (SLUSA), which completely forbids any class action brought under state law if the complaint alleges fraud that is "in connection with" a federal securities transaction. OSEC has filed an amicus brief arguing that an overly broad definition of "in connection with" would severely hamper the ability of victims of financial fraud to find justice through the courts.

The Volcker Rule is our era’s version of Glass-Steagall Act. Glass-Steagall was passed during the Great Depression, and separated commercial and investment banking in order to stabilize the banking system. For much of the 20th century, the Act was a success - both the financial sector and the economy avoided a repeat of the Great Depression. But the relentless pressure for deregulation led to the steady dismantling of the Act’s provisions, culminating with its repeal in 1999 by the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act. Within a decade, both the markets and the economy plunged.

Like Glass-Steagall, the Volcker Rule attempts to restore stability to the banking system by strictly controlling the exposure of commercial banks to volatile financial market activity. If implemented properly, the Volcker Rule would be a big step toward stabilizing markets and the banking system and reducing the risk of more taxpayer-funded bailouts.

Both the Volcker Rule and the larger Dodd-Frank Act have met with stiff resistance from the financial industry and sympathetic lawmakers. Fortunately, the regulatory process provides an opportunity for concerned citizens to express their views. When regulators released a proposed implementation of the regulation, Occupy the SEC submitted a Comment Letter and followed that with meetings with regulators to present our arguments on how to make the rule better. The extended rulemaking process has given lobbyists multiple opportunities to push back on the rule’s development, which is why we remain engaged in commenting on the process.

Occupy the SEC submitted an Amicus Brief in the case of Gabelli v. SEC, which is currently before the Supreme Court. The Court will be making a ruling about when the statute of limitations clock begins for certain fraud actions brought by the government - from the time the fraud was last committed or from the time the fraud was discovered. We contend - along with the SEC - that the timing should accrue from discovery of the fraud.

The misleadingly named JOBS Act releases so-called "emerging growth" companies from having to comply with the investor-protection requirements of Sarbanes Oxley (or SOX). Emerging growth companies are supposed to be fledgling businesses that are financially burdened by SOX compliancy. According to this Act, such businesses should have annual revenues of less than $1 billion. But is that really "emerging?" For more details read our whole Comment Letter.

In the spring of 2012, J.P. Morgan lost billions of dollars on a series of speculative trades. done under the auspices of what the bank claimed was "portfolio hedging." That classification put the trades into a category that was explicitly exempted from the proposed draft of the Volcker Rule. Three guesses who lobbied heavily for the exemption.

LIBOR stands for the London Interbank Offer Rate, which is a rate calculated by member banks that tracks their borrowing costs, and is the basis for hundreds of trillions of dollars of derivatives, mortgages and other credit instruments. Last summer, Barclays was caught submitting interest rates that were massaged - either inflated or deflated - so that they could profit off certain trades or make their books look better than they were. Further investigations revealed that the fixing of rates extended beyond Barclays and had much larger ramifications for the markets.