Sen. Phil Gramm, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, made the following statement today as part of his remarks in connection with the Senate passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. The full text of his remarks will be published in the Congressional Record.

"I am proud to add my voice in support of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. This legislation represents the end product of work that began in S. 2697, which Senator Lugar and I introduced on June 8.

"The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 completes the work of last year's financial services modernization law, bringing our financial regulation in line with the rapid pace of developments in the global marketplace.

"The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 will now allow new and important financial products – single stock futures – to be sold in America. It protects financial institutions from over-regulation, and provides legal certainty for the $60 trillion market in swaps.

"Enactment of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 will be noted as a major achievement of the 106th Congress. Taken together with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the work of this Congress will be seen as a watershed, where we turned away from the outmoded, Depression-era approach to financial regulation and adopted a framework that will position our financial services industries to be world leaders into the new century."