The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was created by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, but the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) did not exist until 1974, when the Commodity Futures Trading Act1 was passed. Before then, the Department of Agriculture regulated commodities futures and commodities exchanges, and that department did not transfer authority to the CFTC until 1975.2 In that same year, the 1975 Act Amendments to the Exchange Act3 gave the SEC the responsibility to facilitate the creation of a national market system for securities trading.
Since many of the same firms traded securities and commodities, and the CFTC was patterned to some extent upon the SEC, Congress could have given the SEC responsibility for monitoring futures trading and futures exchanges. However, when Ray Garrett, chairman of the SEC, and a corporate finance lawyer, was contacted by the White House and offered regulatory jurisdiction over the futures markets, he declined this opportunity.4
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