Eric Cantor Promises Oil Speculators That Republicans Will Block Financial Regulations

Wednesday, 18 May 2011
by: Lee Fang
ThinkProgress

Yesterday morning, House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) visited the Chicago headquarters of the CME Group, “the world’slargest owner and operator” of private exchanges for derivatives products. CME Group specializes in a number of markets, including trading futures contracts for various blends of crude oil and food commodities. Cantor met with executives, and at one point, gave brief remarks before CME Group employees and various commodity speculators.

Cantor told the audience of speculators that his Republican caucus would “do our part” to block the implementation of financial reforms passed last year as part of the sweeping Dodd-Frank law. He even called out the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the regulators in charge of overseeing derivatives and energy speculation, and promised to stop regulations from going online:

CANTOR: And you’ve managed to be able to serve that function in the CME Group for so much of this country and the world, and you’ve also managed to position as a true world leader. We want that in every arena. We want to help you continue to lead for America, that means we gotta do our part when you see the implementation of Dodd-Frank coming at you like a barreling train. We want to help control that so that we can get some sensible, sensible follow up to that legislation. [...] Whether it’s the EPA, the FDA, the FCC, the SEC, the CFTC, you name it, there is an acronym for a federal agency causing harm right now. We’re trying to pull that in.

(More here.)