Word: cftc
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There is one major catch. "This is the biggest telephone rip-off in the country," says John Field, enforcement chief of the Washington-based Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). "All the con artists in the world got out of aluminum siding and land sales and into commodity options." The New York State attorney general's office and the CFTC, in a complaint filed jointly in federal district court in Manhattan, have charged 30 companies and 37 individuals in eight states and Panama with illegally selling oil futures contracts. These commit the buyer to purchase petroleum for either delivery...
...slowest off the mark has been the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is responsible for maintaining orderly markets. To learn the identities of the big silver players, CFTC staff members have been talking to bankers and brokers who have been doing much of the buying and selling for clients. So far, the commission's main accomplishment has been to file suit against the Banque Suisse Populaire, headquartered in Bern, Switzerland, for failing to divulge its list of silver clients...
That is unlikely. Commodities trading is a booming business. Last year the value of commodities contracts traded hit $ 1 trillion, or five times the volume of all stocks and bonds that changed hands. And the CFTC is at last getting tough. Last week it ordered a ban as of June 1 on commodity options trading-characterized by Bagley as "the worst lie-by-day, fly-by-night operation in the financial world...
...exchanges. But in recent years some inventive firms began selling in the U.S. options supposedly traded in London (some were; some weren't). Usually business was drummed up by fast-talking telephone solicitors telling sugarplum tales of immense profits. The day the ban was announced, the CFTC said it was investigating 30 of the 40 or so companies now dealing in options...
...opinion of many commodities dealers, the CFTC's ban is overkill because it would apply not only to the hucksters but to such respected New York City firms as Mocatta Metals and Bache Halsey Stuart Shields, which sell options on gold, silver and other metals futures. Senator Walter Huddleston of Kentucky will soon introduce legislation to permit the sale of options, but only by firms that have a net worth of $10 million or more and fully disclose costs, commissions and fees...