CryptoDad

Chapter 1Down in the Swaps

If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough.

—Mario Andretti (champion auto racer), Interview with Sam Smith

Red Light

Thursday, November 6, 2014 (CFTC Headquarters, Washington, DC)

“You cannot speak at SEFCON V.”

I looked at my senior legal counsel, Marcia Blase, for a moment and let that sink in.

“What? I thought that we were good to go? What happened?”

SEFCON, which had launched in 2009, was the annual Swap Execution Facility Conference. To many readers that must certainly sound like some obscure Wall Street gathering—and a boring one at that. But it was then the premier industry event focused on the important and growing category of trading platforms—swaps execution facilities—that were defined and mandated by Title VII of the Dodd–Frank Act. Dodd–Frank was the landmark financial industry reform legislation passed in the wake of the 2008 crash.¹ (More about this swaps business momentarily.)

This conference was organized by a trade association I had helped form a few years before: the Wholesale Markets Brokers Association Americas (WMBAA). I was a past-chairman of WMBAA, stepping down in 2013 when the Obama Administration approached me about serving on the CFTC. Now, as a CFTC commissioner, I had tentatively accepted an invitation to return to SEFCON to address the audience from my new perspective as a regulator.

“The White House will not grant you a waiver. They consider it non-essential. You can't speak at the conference.” ...