The Obama administration and Chinese banking regulators realized at the same time last June that they wanted to clamp down on largely unregulated trading in commodity and financial derivatives.
The US effort has spawned a joint Banking-Agriculture bill in the House and a Banking bill in the Senate while the administration in the persons of CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner holds fast to their original intent to move derivatives trading onto markets and limit bilateral OTC trades.
Hindered by that thing called democracy, discussions continue.
In the People's Republic?
This month state banking regulators throttled the Chinese participation in derivatives trades by demanding the banks sell only as many contracts as a company needed to hedge an actual product.
Speculative deals or financial trading of contracts in a secondary market? Gone.
According to the November 23 Financial Times, trading volumes in Hong Kong, where the foreign banks peddling the contracts to China's four big state-owned banks (who act as intermediaries for smaller banks and companies throughout China), have been cut in half.
"We're selling plain vanilla business in China, that's it," a banker told the FT.
Going offshore looks a little less exotic if all they serve is one flavor.
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