March 3, 2010:

“I am pleased that the CFTC Chairman acknowledged our concerns and appeared open to changes to the leverage requirement,” Boswell said. “The CFTC has received over 5,600 comments on the foreign exchange proposed rule and I am hopeful that this input will help the Commission to find a common ground that won’t chase business overseas, while still protecting consumer interests.”

U.S. Rep. Boswell: Chairs subcommittee hearing on Commodity Exchange Act in 2008 Farm Bill
3/3/2010

Dear Sirs,

I would like to hereby express my deep concern with the intentions of CFTC to limit the maximal leverage for retail Forex brokers from the current 1:100 to 1:10. In my opinion, the following scenario is likely in that event:

1. The maximal leverage reguirement will be increased for all US-regulated brokers from the current 1:100 to 1:10. This will clearly demonstrate a complete dismissal of a regular Forex trader’s interests if they happen to be conflicting with the interests of the “big wallets” – banks and non-retail futures brokers. We do not wish to be “protected” till we go broke just to make them even richer.

2. US-based retail Forex brokers will sure be unwilling to lose their business completely. They’ve already got burned with the recent self-imposed regulations of the NFA (which is not even a government agency, although many traders are made to believe it is) and now clearly realize the 1:10 leverage will be the last nail into their coffin. These retail brokers will therefore start moving their businesses to other countries and servicing US customers from there, successful examples of which already exist: Dukascopy in Switzerland (which has recently introduced MT4 in addition to their custom platform), ATCBrokers and FXCM in the UK, FXDD in Malta, FXPro in Cyprus etc.

3. The US government in response will do everything possible to prevent US traders from enjoying the benefits of being serviced in other countries by making overseas transactions to personal bank accounts even more controlled and restricted.

4. Those traders who make a living from their trading will then have no other choice but to set up offshore companies for themselves through the Internet (contrary to a popular belief, this doesn’t cost much – one can get an offshore company with an overseas bank account for as low as $1,500).

5. As all (or most) trading accounts will be on the companies’ names, the US government may heavily lose on the income tax they collect from US Forex traders. Thus, trying to harm the average Joe trader and make the banks and futures brokers richer at his expense, the government is harming themselves in the end.

Since recently, America (which I really love) has been turning from a land of opportunities to a land of restrictions. Very sad to see this, indeed.

Yours sincerely,
Jacob Beasley

“7,000 comments is astounding. To show just how unprecedented these numbers are, last year the CFTC published some 17 rule proposals and the number of comments received for all 17 combined was only 220.

In 2007 and 2008, total comments for all CFTC register proposals totaled less than 250.

This year, the CFTC released a rule regarding energy speculation limits. That issue was given far more coverage by the media and yet only 22 people bothered to comment on those limits.

-Jason
__________________
FXCM Expo in Vegas May 3-4 2010″

The most effective way would be to curb the excessive bonuses handed out in Wall Street.

It is truelly amazing – most of those responses are ordinary folks- not sophisticated lawyers or industry insiders -that speaks volumes!! – when do you ever see such response to a proposed rule by a govenement agency who overlooks trillions of dollars in derivatives traded by sophisticated fanancial entities? – go check proposed rules by FERC and see if they get 5k responses for anything they write.

I must suggest you re-write this whole article, as you are desregardng the time spent by ordinary american stepping up for an industry which is being witched hunt by regulators.

They need to concentrate on fraud, and this is not fraud.