Christmas In September for Deregulated Commodity Speculators

By Susie Madrak

David Dayen with an important story about how an Obama-appointed judge jettisoned the part of Dodd-Frank that limited commodities trading. Since we are frequently squeezed by food and fuel speculators, this was an attempt to stop the worst abuses. Oh well! Not such a complete shock, since Wilkins refused to issue an injunction against speculators back in February, but you'd think a federal judge wouldn't want to make the rape-and-pillage policy quite so obvious:

A federal judge today threw out the Dodd-Frank provision that empowered the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to set position limits on commodity trading. Judge Robert Wilkins said in his ruling that the CFTC did not prove the necessity of position limits to curb runaway speculation, and that the law itself did not “constitute a clear and unambiguous mandate to set position limits, as the Commission argues.”