Important news from Mafalda

The regulator’s rule had outlined requirements for clearinghouses including financial resources, default rules, settlement procedures, treatment of funds and reporting and record keeping, among others.The CFTC said for now it would not move forward on a measure to heighten financial resource requirements on systemically important clearinghouses.Under Dodd-Frank, any clearinghouse dubbed “systemically important” by the Financial Stability Oversight Council could gain access to some of the Federal Reserve’s loan programs, including the discount window.As part of its Dodd-Frank rulemaking, the CFTC had initially proposed requiring systemically important clearinghouses to maintain enough funds to cover the default of their two largest members.Any other clearinghouse, by contrast, would only need enough money to cover the default of their one largest member.But in the final rules on Tuesday, the CFTC will only require clearinghouses to have enough funds to cover the default by their largest member, regardless of whether or not they are dubbed “systemically important.”A CFTC staffer who spoke with reporters late Monday said the CFTC backed off of its plan pending negotiations with the FSOC and international regulations.”This isn’t meant to say we’ll never to do,” he said. “It was just premature at this time to do it.”