The U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Financial Services ("FSC") held a hearing titled "Fed Oversight: Lack of Transparency and Accountability." The hearing examined three aspects of the Federal Reserve from different perspectives: (i) "the lack of transparency and the opacity of internal processes at the Federal Reserve"; (ii) "[the] overreach by the Federal Reserve in expanding its authority and power beyond the authority granted to it under the Dodd-Frank Act"; and (iii) "the Federal Reserve's refusal to comply with Congressional investigations and requests for information as well

SEC Chair Mary Jo White discussed the purpose of the annual Broker-Dealer Compliance Outreach Program. She stated that the program is intended to offer insights into the SEC's initiatives and priorities. Chair White emphasized the importance of transparency and discussed past and recent risk alerts that were released by the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations. Chair White delineated her examination priorities for the next year. They included the following: fee structures, suitability, order-routing conflicts, recidivist representatives, microcap activity, excessive trading

The SEC charged 34 individuals for their involvement in alleged schemes to manipulate microcap stock trading. The six firms that were involved allegedly acted as unregistered broker-dealers. See: SEC Press Release; SEC Complaint.

The SEC charged an investment adviser firm with providing inaccurate trade data to four prime brokers. This created inaccuracies in the brokers' books and records, and resulted in unreliable data being provided to the SEC for use in its investigations. According to the SEC order, the erroneous data relayed to the four brokers had a significant impact. The brokers listed approximately 552 million shares inaccurately in their books and records. The false information also was incorporated into data that the brokers sent to regulators electronically, resulting in approximately 14.4 million shares

CFTC Commissioner J. Christopher Giancarlo issued a statement questioning market rules and processes unsupported by Dodd-Frank. The Commissioner issued the statement prior to an upcoming roundtable by the CFTC's Division of Market Oversight ("DMO"). The roundtable will address the CFTC's trade execution requirement and the process of reaching made-available-to-trade ("MAT") determinations. Commissioner Giancarlo contended that the roundtable should serve as an opportunity for the CFTC to "thoroughly reconsider" rules that are unsupported by Dodd-Frank. He argued that the MAT rulemaking should