Grygo is the chief content officer for FTF & FTF News.
Lost in the tsunami of federal government budget battle news is the welcome development that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has a new, official chairman — Rostin “Russ” Behnam, and that the stage has been set for a full roster of commissioners.
On Dec. 16, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to approve Rostin Behnam as chairman of the CFTC. Behnam has been acting chairman since January 2021 when his fellow commissioners voted him into that post. He joined the CFTC in 2017 when former President Trump nominated him.
Behnam has “extensive experiences in financial and agricultural markets,” according to his bio on the CFTC website. He has worked as “a proprietary equities trader in New York City before pursuing a Juris Doctorate at Syracuse University.” Before joining the CFTC, he garnered extensive experience on Capitol Hill.
Rostin Behnam
For the moment, the CFTC only has two commissioners — Behnam, a Democrat, and Dawn DeBerry Stump, a Republican nominated by former President Trump. The rate of exiting commissioners has outpaced the process of replacement, which is a complex of nominations, hearings, and scheduled votes before the Senate. It may be a while before new commissioners are fully approved.
To fill the CFTC commissioner vacancies, the Biden administration put forth Democrats Kristin Johnson and Christy Goldsmith Romero in September, and recently from the GOP side, Summer Mersinger and Caroline Pham. Stump will be finishing her five-year term in April 2022.
Before her time on the CFTC, Stump led Stump Strategic, “a consulting firm she founded in 2016. Before starting her firm, Mrs. Stump was executive director and senior vice president of U.S. Policy for the Futures Industry Association (FIA) and vice president at the New York Stock Exchange,” according to her CFTC bio.
As everything in Washington, D.C. is hyper-political, it’s not clear when the U.S. Senate will get to work on the CFTC nominees or if there will be battles galore ahead. The process may be straightforward as in past years or there could political flare-ups related to mid-term elections that will complicate the process.
Dawn DeBerry Stump
The only bipartisan, cross-industry agreement is that Behnam definitely had the votes to be confirmed. In a prepared statement, Behnam thanked the big-wigs and pledged to support the nominees as they endure the confirmation process.
Speaking for myself, I hope that the confirmation process is free of political friction and that the industries that the CFTC serves will soon have a full roster of CFTC commissioners paying attention to them.
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