It is notable that the exchanges brought this enforcement action without the involvement of FINRA enforcement staff and that the exchanges collaborated on the action.

As in a press release on the action, the SEC approved in 2019 Nasdaq’s request to conduct investigative and enforcement functions previously performed by FINRA. NYSE its market surveillance, investigation and enforcement role from FINRA in early 2016.

This joint investigation may serve as notice of the exchanges…

Commissioner Gensler reports that in 1963, financial services accounted for 3.5% of the U.S. economy, while today it accounts for about 8%. He also cites to a 2014 study, which he describes as reporting that the "costs of financial intermediation . . . were as high in 2014 as they were in 1900." The message behind these numbers is that financial services are too great a part of the economy with the implicit assumption that costs of financial services are effectively a tax or a drag on the U.…

The questions asked are perfectly reasonable, but they are not the most important questions and they are not directed to the most important regulator. The letter begins with the assumptions that the digital asset markets are growing and that there is some level of fraud in those markets (both of which assumptions are certainly true) and essentially asks what the CFTC is going to do about it. While many digital assets may be "commodities," and therefore the CFTC has antifraud jurisdiction,…

Although the report and the recommendations concerned the activities of the government regulators, and not of private parties, institutions that collect PII may find the structure of the report (including the framework set out on pages 6-8) useful for considering how well they protect PII, particularly given the possible penalty for failure to do so. The report is largely based on OMB Circular A-130, which describes "," and provides more detailed guidance as to the protection of information…