The last thing the world needs is two regulatory agencies whose duties overlap putting their heads together to come up with a compromise. But that's what's going on right now: The SEC and CFTC are knocking booty in a rare meeting to exchange views on how to deal with Wall Street. The WSJ story on this (with the amusing headline "Exchanges Offer Views on Harmonizing Regulation") notes that CFTC Chair Gary Gensler said in his opening remarks, "All options must be on the table, and there are no sacred cows."

When all is said and done, this is just another act of the dog-and-pony show the Obama Administration is orchestrating to make people think that there's going to be more regulation of cockamamie derivatives and less manipulation of commodity futures prices by the goniffs currently out of control under the CFTC.

Uh-huh. The fact is that the SEC, for all its faults, at least has rules in place to actually regulate the markets. The CFTC, on the other hand, is mostly a joke, with its "self-regulating" rules for commodities speculators.

The guys doing over-the-counter derivatives that speculators so often abuse want no part of the SEC telling them what to do. CME Group (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) Chair Craig Donohue voiced the veiled threat. Or, as the WSJ story puts it, "Mr. Donohue cautioned against abandoning the CFTC philosophy of regulation and said an SEC style applied to futures markets would drive the business offshore. While he rejected a wholesale merger, he said there are a "few discrete areas" where regulation could be improved through harmonization, according to the prepared remarks."

But Gensler is no regulator; he's just going through the motions, so don't sweat it too much, guys.