Speaking at the FIA's Annual International Futures Industry Conference, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Gary Gensler has emphasised the need for regulation of OTC derivatives trading and central clearing for swaps, saying that the transparency seen in the equities market should be applied to derivatives too, "The public has benefited for decades from transparency and efficiency of the securities and futures markets. Such transparent trading brings both real time post-trade transparency and some pre-trade transparency. Bringing transparency to the regulators is not enough; we must bring real-time transparency to the public through exchanges and other trading venues."

He continued, "No doubt, there are a number of you at this conference who have opposed regulation.... [An] assumption has been that at least one party to a transaction - the derivative dealer - is already regulated. The financial crisis highlighted that this is flawed assumption. In some cases, even when a dealer may have been part of a larger regulated financial institution, its derivatives business was not explicitly regulated. In other cases, such as with AIG and the investment banks, their derivatives affiliates had no effective regulation at all."

Finally he noted that in the conflict between duty to shareholders and creating a secure financial system, preventing economic collapse beats quarterly profit: "Wall Street appears to be aligning themselves with corporate end-users in an effort to exempt customer transactions from central clearing. While only approximately 9% of the market represents transactions between dealers and non-financial end-users, Wall Street seems to be making the case that financial end-users also should be exempt. This could possibly leave 60% of the clearable market outside of clearing. Wall Street might express partial support for a clearing requirement, but when it comes to the trading requirement, they appear rather allergic. After all, Wall Street has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders and will look to maintain its information advantage. After the worst crisis in 80 years, though, we need real reform that protects the American public."