H.R. 5592/S. 3118, the Derivatives Oversight and Taxpayer Protection Act, would (among other things) stiffen penalties for law-breaking derivatives traders, bring more derivative trading under the regulatory umbrella, and put more of the consequences of risky trading upon traders, not taxpayers. Dodd-Frank does force more sunshine onto derivatives trading, but given that derivative trading helped crash our economy in 2008, we could use a bit more. A "derivative" literally derives its value from another contract -- mostly, it describes a "bet" on how the price of a particular commodity will go up or down in the future. It's rather like gambling, and, as you know, gambling isn't a good way of making money: unless you're in on a certain fix -- which is, of course, illegal and immoral -- "betting" on (for example) fluctuations in the price of corn remains largely a crapshoot, regardless of how much preparation you've done. And unlike, say, fantasy football, when a derivative goes bad, we all feel the effects. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support more transparency for high-risk trading.
Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell California Gov. Jerry Brown to stop farmers and big ag corporations from irrigating their crops with oil wastewater, then CREDO still helps you do that. California surely suffers from drought (and not from smothering regulations involving Donald Trump's "three-inch fish"), but that doesn't make oil wastewater on crops -- which sooner or later will become your food -- a solution. I'm sure some right-wingers will squeal well, you can't prove the wastewater is bad! To which I would respond: what, exactly, about the phrase "oil wastewater" exudes confidence in its safety? Right-wingers constantly point at dung and say you should go ahead and taste it because it might be meatloaf. The only thing we don't know about oil wastewater is exactly how concentrated its carcinogens and toxins are. Of course, I'm not just about avoiding catastrophe -- I'm also about solutions. And, in that spirit, I would suggest that using water for farming instead of fracking would help California (and its agricultural industry) cope much better with the drought.
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