Industry officials Wednesday accused the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) of rushing the rulemaking process under the Dodd-FrankWall Street Reform Act, and said the proposed rules issued so far are too prescriptive.

“It’s in the best interests of the market to allow as much a grace period as possible to make sure regulations are done right and don’t have unintended consequences,” Greg Mocek, partner with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft and former director of enforcement at the CFTC, said at GasMart 2011 in Chicago.

“I think what is currently proposed by Congress [extending Dodd-Frank implementation until end of 2012] would be a good timeframe,” he told NGI.

While CFTC has indicated that it wants to have the final rules out by year-end, “I think it will be the end of 2012 before the thing is truly operating,”said Paul Cusenza, CEO of Nodal Exchange LLC. This is even if Congress does not pass legislation that would extend the deadline for implementing Dodd-Frank.

HR 1573, which would postpone implementation of Dodd-Frank until the end of 2012, was approved by the House Agriculture Committee earlier this month, and is expected to be marked up by the House Financial Services Committee in the near term.

While the CFTC likes to think of itself as a principles-based regulator, its Dodd-Frank proposed rules were criticized for being prescriptive. “You’re in an environment where there are prescriptive rules and regulations on everything you do,” Mocek said.

CFTC’s proposed rules “are totally overly prescriptive,” said Jerry Putnam, CEO of TruMarx Data Partners. The proposed rules will result in “harmful consequences” in the market, and “those unintended consequences are going to be enormous,” he noted.

Putnam believes that many of the rules are in conflict, and “at some point there will have to be changes” made.

“There is no doubt…a fair number of prescriptive regulations in Dodd-Frank,” Mocek said. “The regulatory environment has gone through a sea change as a result of Dodd-Frank, and you’ll see a fair amount of costs imposed upon everyone operating” in the multi-trillion dollar swaps market, he said.

“I think that some of the rules are in fact more prescriptive than what the Dodd-Frank Act prescribed,” Cusenza said. One example is the proposed rule related to the price discovery function, he said.

©Copyright 2011Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.