
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 25, 1990                   TAG: 9004250143
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B5   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

WENDY GRAMM FIGHTS TO HOLD REGULATORY JOB

Wendy Gramm has just been renominated by President Bush as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees billions of dollars of investments in speculative international markets.

But even though her husband, Phil, is an influential Texas Republican senator with special clout at the White House, Republicans in both the administration and Congress are criticizing the CFTC and urging that it be swallowed up by other regulatory agencies.

The CFTC was established by Congress in 1974 to regulate the speculative trading of contract prices on agricultural commodities before they reach the marketplace. In recent years, commodity trading has vastly expanded into new areas such as precious metals, raw materials, foreign currencies, commercial interest rates, and U.S. government and mortgage securities.

Gramm, who has urged less regulation by the CFTC rather than more, had been in her job as chairman for a year when a huge scandal was uncovered, involving charges of widespread criminal fraud in the Chicago commodity trading pits.

But critics on Capitol Hill say that if the CFTC had been a more forceful regulator to begin with, the scandal would not have happened in the first place.

by CNB