On August 5, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) announced that it downgraded the United States to a AA+ rating from its longstanding AAA status. The immediate effects of S&P’s downgrade are likely to be modest, largely because it was expected and at least partly discounted in advance. But for participants in the derivatives markets, the downgrade…

When Dodd-Frank was signed into law on July 21, 2010, it was the just the beginning of a very long process.  The Act came in at over 2,000 pages, but left the majority of the work – roughly 400 rules or studies – to 30 different federal agencies. Only 49 of the mandated rules have…