No Insider Trading Rules?

I found the information in this article useful.

It appears there are no "insider trading" restrictions within the CFTC regulations except with respect to employees. Is there any wonder why all of the products "created" over the past few years have been products NOT traded on any open exchange?

From the article bit below...

Participants also debated concerns about harmonization when it came to insider-trading prohibitions.
Annette Nazareth, a former Democratic SEC commissioner, said she wants to see such prohibitions when it comes to commodities futures, modeled after how such restrictions exist in the securities market.
"The Commodity Exchange Act generally contains no such ban, other than for CFTC and market employees, largely because one of the historical functions of the futures markets was to permit hedgers to protect themselves against risks to the commodity positions based on their own knowledge of those positions," Nazareth said.
However, the CFTC's Chilton said he "wasn't so sure" about bringing the insider-trading ban to the commodity futures regulator.
CBOE's Brodsky said both agencies could impose insider-trading restrictions so long as a particular rule on insider trading applies only to a particular product and not broadly across all sectors.
Some officials testifying expressed concern about whether insider-trading prohibitions should apply to broad-based indexed products as opposed to individual products.
With lots of derivatives, Brodsky said, there is no transparency or reporting requirements, giving many investors the opportunity to do a wide variety of insider trading.
CFTC's Gensler pointed out that the agencies as well as the White House and Congress are working on legislation that would bring these products, both over-the-counter and exchange-traded, under regulation. "We are working on record keeping, reporting and other regulations for derivatives," he said.
Clearinghouses
Clearinghouses, which are intermediaries between buyers and sellers, should have agreements among themselves, based on a common set of principles agreed to by the agencies, so that no problematic products slip through the cracks, said Anthony Leitner, director at A.J. Leitner & Associates.

I especially like the remark by Anthony Leitner. It reminds me of the remarks by Bernanke and Paulson when they started in their new jobs while still having their feet in their prior ones where they suggested point blank that the banking industry was sophisticated enough to gauge its own risk profiles and thus could create it's own guidelines and needed little "meddling" from the Fed or government as to how to manage risk capital ratios. These words were being spoken as the entire financial system was stretched over 30-1 and beginning to implode in 2006.