Massad sworn in at CFTC

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission officially has a new chairman, after Timothy Massad was sworn into the post Thursday.

Massad, a former Treasury Department official who oversaw the government’s bailout programs, now takes the reins at the financial regulator charged with overseeing the large and complex world of financial derivatives.

{mosads}He was confirmed Tuesday by the Senate, along with two other new commissioners to fill out the five-member CFTC, Sharon Bowen and Christopher Giancarlo.

Now on the job, Massad will lead a regulator that has been handed broad new powers under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, overseeing derivatives for the first time. The regulator, previously headed by Gary Gensler, has largely completed writing the rules implementing its Dodd-Frank powers, leaving Massad with the primary job of enforcing them.

And in that role, lawmakers will be paying attention. On Wednesday, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) congratulated Massad on his confirmation before offering some unsolicited advice.

“I am hopeful that Chairman Massad will lead by consensus, which will be better for America’s economy in the long run,” he said in a statement.