THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission had voted to approve the first regulations since Phil Gramm trashed the old ones, to limit speculation in commodities and futures trading.

Big financial speculators will be limited in their ability to manipulate the price of oil and 27 other commodities under a set of new rules adopted Tuesday by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Yet even as the CFTC approved the new rules to rein in excessive speculation on a 3-2 party-line vote — with Democratic commissioners in the majority — some financial-market analysts and lawmakers in Congress complained that the new rules fall short of what's needed to curb speculation effectively.

"This rule begins the process of doing that, but much more needs to be done," Dennis Kelleher, president of the advocacy group Better Markets, said in a statement. "Speculators' casino mentality brings them big profits but hurts everyone else from the kitchen table to the gas pump."...Under the new rules, speculative limits for next-month contracts would be set at 25 percent of the deliverable supply. This is in line with historical practices. It now also would apply to the futures market.

For all products except natural gas, the CFTC has opted for a 1-to-1 ratio, where traders are subject to the same limits in the futures market as in the physical markets. This is a narrowing of past rules.

For natural gas, speculative contracts could exceed ones in the physical markets by a 5-to-1 ratio, something that didn't sit well with consumer groups who fear it will lead to higher home-heating costs.

The new rules cannot take effect until 60 days after the CFTC defines what qualifies as a "swap," a definition that may take until December or January. That's a contract that locks in a bet between two private parties in the vast so-called dark markets that until last year were completely unregulated.

The CFTC has also given us another reason to vote for Obama. You know that any Republican/Teabagger would eliminate the regulations and bring us $150+ a barrel oil again.