Acting CFTC Chairman Walter Lukken today asked the House Committee on Agriculture to increase funding for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission by 60% as pressure mounts for greater oversight of derivatives markets. “The commission is doing much more with less … (its) ratio of workload to resources has always been lean compared to other financial regulators. But we have reached our limit and cannot uphold our mission without immediate additional resources,” Mr. Lukken said in prepared remarks at a committee hearing on energy trading.
Mr. Lukken, who is asking for a $157 million budget for 2008, up from $98 million in 2007, noted that, over the past three decades, “the volume on futures exchange has grown 8,000% while the CFTC staffing numbers have fallen 12%.”
