Commodities Futures Trading Commission, Putting Order in the System

It has been more than 150 years that futures contracts have been traded in the United States for agricultural commodities. It has been the federal government, through the Commodity Exchange Authority, that has been regulating it ever since 1920. In the recent years however, futures contract trading has extensively expanded at a very fast rate. It even went beyond just agricultural and physical commodities and now included other financial tools such as securities, stocks and foreign exchange.
In its desire to better regulate a bigger option and commodity futures market, the US Congress created in 1974 a commodities futures trading commission. It is called CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), a much more comprehensive framework for regulation for futures contract trading. This new commodities futures trading commission replaced the Commodity Exchange Authority which used to be the one to regulate the futures market which used to be a lot smaller back then.
More recently, US President Obama himself has mentioned some loopholes in the regulations of the CFTC which resulted in the lack of transparency and skyrocketing prices of oil in the market. As of 2008, several moves have been made in the House to direct the CFTC to curb the excessive speculation in this type of trading. It is also expected to impose some necessary corrective actions as well as increase the margin requirements to achieve the elimination of too much speculation which harmfully distorts the market.
At present, the CFTC makes sure that the futures market is economically utilized through the encouragement of the market's efficiency and competitiveness as well as ensuring the market's integrity.