In adopting , the SEC effectively imposed costs on broker-dealers that made it prohibitively expensive for broker-dealers to provide recommendations or investment advice to retail customers. (See .) One of the many predictable outcomes of that decision is that investors look for advice elsewhere (i.e., from unregulated providers).

Among the questions asked by the CFTC are whether the proposed contracts are "contrary to the public interest." of the CEA provides that the CFTC may reject a contract if it involves "similar activity" to the other items listed in Section 5c(c)(5(C); e.g., war, but it does not give the CFTC an open-ended right to reject contracts based on the Commissioners' judgment that the contract would be contrary to the public interest. Given that elections do not, at least so far, resemble war,…

The "strategic plan" is ultimately a political document rather than a substantive regulatory plan. No one quarrels with the goal of protecting retail investors and the SEC's systems, or with the concept of investor outreach.

In Chair Gary Gensler's months as head of the SEC, the agency has put out an unprecedented number of new rule proposals. The generic goals in the strategic plan seem intended to be a justification for all those proposals. But, at a more specific level, it is…

Comment letters to the SEC by industry associations usually provide some criticism of the likely burdens of new regulations; however, industry participants are generally cautious of being viewed as oppositional by their regulator. This letter is therefore notable in both substance and tone, and for its discussion of potential administrative procedure failures of the proposal.

SEC Chair Gary Gensler's aggressive program of rulemaking has pushed the boundaries of statutory authority in…