In an letter to the Washington Post, SEC Chair Mary Schapiro calls for the need to regulate swaps, some of which you may have heard before as credit default swaps, or CDS. Boiling down what her criticisms of the financial reform legislation, her recommendations come down to:

• All securities-based swaps should be regulated as securities; all commodity-based swaps should be subject to commodities laws.
• Apply TRACE, a public disclosure & tracking system for debt securities, to swaps.
• Use clearinghouses and exchanges in transactions for swaps.