Gary Gensler

Gary Gensler
Chairperson of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
In office May 26, 2009 – January 3, 2014
President	Barack Obama
Preceded by	Walter Lukken (Acting)
Succeeded by	Mark Wetjen (Acting)
Personal details
Born	(1957-10-18) October 18, 1957 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Political party	Democratic Party
Spouse(s)	Francesca Danieli 1986–2006
Children	Anna Lee Isabel
Alma mater	University of Pennsylvania
Religion	Judaism
[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Gary S. Gensler (born October 18, 1957) previously served as the 11th chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission under President Barack Obama from May 26, 2009 to January 3, 2014.

Gensler was Undersecretary of the Treasury (1999-2001) and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (1997-1999) in the United States. Barack Obama selected him to lead the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has jurisdiction over $5 trillion in trades, approximately 9% of the world market.^[7][8] Gensler was sworn in on May 26, 2009.

His current term as CFTC Commissioner ended on April 13, 2012; however, he was allowed to continue as a holdover until January 3, 2014, shortly after Timothy Massad was nominated by President Obama to replace him as CFTC Chairman.^[9][10]

Early life and education

Gensler was born in Baltimore, in 1957, the son of Jane (née Tilles) and Sam Gensler.^[11] His father was a cigarette and pinball machine vendor to local bars,^[12] and was very active in the Baltimore Democratic Party. He has a twin brother, Robert Gensler, who went to the same college and now runs an actively managed fund for T. Rowe Price.^[13] He also has a sister Barbra Gensler Skarzynski and two other brothers Kenny Gensler and David Gensler. In 1978, he received a summa cum laude Economics B.S. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. The next year, he earned a Master of Business Administration from Wharton.^[14]

Business career

Gary Gensler joined Goldman Sachs in 1978 and spent 18 years there. He became a partner at the age of 30, youngest in Goldman Sachs history at the time. He later became head of the company’s fixed income and currency trading operations in Tokyo by the mid-’90s, and eventually the company’s co-head of finance.^[15]

He also advised the National Football League in its television negotiations in 1990. He helped raise the TV-advertisement-price-per-team to $32 million per year, up from $17 million from the previous contract.

Gensler is the co-author of the 2000 book (with Greg Baer), The Great Mutual Fund Trap. It argues that active trading and investing is an inefficient strategy for individual investors, and that individuals should stick with index and exchange traded funds.

Political career

Clinton administration

As the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for domestic finance from 1999-2001, the last two years of the Clinton administration, Gensler was overseeing policies of U.S. financial markets, debt management, financial services, and community development. Gensler advocated the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which exempted credit default swaps and other derivatives from regulation.

Senior Adviser to Sarbanes

He was a Senior Adviser to U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-MD), one of the authors of legislation that eventually became the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002, designed to bring greater oversight to the accounting industry and reform of corporate governance.

Obama administration

Gensler was a senior economic adviser to the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2008 and, after the Democratic Primary, the Obama campaign. He reviewed the Securities and Exchange Commission for the Obama transition team.^[2] Obama appointed Gensler to become Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. During the Senate confirmation hearings two senators attempted to block his nomination. In March 2009, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)opposed Gensler, because he “had worked with Sen. Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan to exempt credit default swaps from regulation, which led to the collapse of AIG and has resulted in the largest taxpayer bailout in US history.” Sanders also accused Gensler of working to deregulate electronic energy trading, which led to the downfall of Enron, and of supporting the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, which allowed American banks to become “too big to fail.”^[16]

In early November, 2011, Gensler stepped aside from the CFTC's investigation of the giant derivatives broker MF Global because of his ties to Jon Corzine, CEO of MF Global, for whom he had worked while both were at Goldman Sachs. Yet in late November, 2011, Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas), head of the House Financial Services oversight subcommittee investigating MF Gloabal's collapse, noted that Corzine personally lobbied Gensler and his staff that year in opposition to a possible CFTC rule, that would have affected MF Global. Neugebauer asked Gensler why he didn't remove himself earlier from MF Global matters, so Corzine wouldn't have been able to lobby him.^[17][18]

After the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act took effect in 2010, dozens of new CFTC rules were written under Gensler as the reach of the CFTC enlarged, including the $35 trillion futures business and the opaque $400 trillion swaps market.^[19] Gensler chose David Meister as enforcement chief, who filed a record number of cases against Wall Street's biggest banks, including UBS and Barclays effecting hundreds of millions of dollars in fines (see Libor) which was unheard of from an agency nicknamed a watchdog that didn't bark.^[20] In 2013 Gensler refused to budge on a July deadline to produce plans for extending Dodd-Frank rules to trading overseas. He left the CFTC in December 2013.

Personal life

In 1986, he married Francesca Danieli, a filmmaker and photo collagist, with whom he had three daughters: Anna, Lee, and Isabel. His wife died of breast cancer in June 2006.^[21] He is a nine-time marathon runner, climbed Mount Rainier during his C.F.T.C. tenure, and currently lives in Baltimore, MD. Gensler is Jewish.^[22]

References

External links

• CFTC biography
• TheNation.com article: Obama's Toxic Advisers