Stripping Away Derivative Containment

In a move sure to be popular with our Galtian overlords, the GOP is proposing to strip funds from the agency which regulates derivatives.  As I've written earlier, government regulation is the containment chamber for the financial nuclear reactor.  You need that containment to ensure safe operation of a potentially catastrophic system.  The GOP are seeking to take a sledge hammer to that containment and let the beast out.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the regulator that’s writing new rules for the derivatives market, faces a 15 percent budget cut under a spending bill circulated by House Republicans.

The CFTC’s budget would fall to $172 million from $202 million under the plan to be considered tomorrow by the agriculture subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. It “provides the necessary resources” for the CFTC to fulfill its duties, Representative Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican and subcommittee chairman, said in a statement. President Barack Obama had requested $308 million in his 2012 budget proposal.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.  But consider the source.  Representative Jack Kingston (R-Crackerville) has a long history of stupidity.

The plan is “penny-wise and pound-foolish,” Bart Chilton, one of the commission’s three Democrats, said in a statement. “We went to the brink of economic disaster. Congress gave us the directives in Dodd-Frank to ensure that doesn’t happen again, and now there are those who would keep us from having the budget to do the job.”

The GOP just want to burn our nation to the ground and salt the earth when the fires die down.