President-elect Barack Obama has named the two most important people who will guide US financial regulation in the coming years, and piqued the interest of derivatives specialists by choosing Mary Schapiro, a former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to run the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The CFTC itself will be headed by Gary Gensler, a former Treasury under-secretary and partner at Goldman Sachs, with a background in fixed income and currency trading.
Obama announced the appointments at a press conference in Chicago on Thursday December 18.
The two officials will have momentous responsibilities. The credibility of the US regulatory system is in tatters after the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, and will need to be rebuilt with radical reform and...