If U.S. regulators continue to push rules (capital and clearing requirements) that make it more expensive to hold, finance and trade U.S. Government Securities, they will discourage financing institutions and investors from holding those securities, or at least drive up the interest rate that must be paid on those securities to attract buyers. As the amount of government debt grows with no political will to constrain that growth, regulatory policy that makes it more expensive for banks to…

To a good extent, Mr. Barr's remarks reflect the significant difference in regulatory approaches under the Biden Administration and the Trump Administration. Mr. Barr’s approach would have one believe that, unless there is significant ongoing and additional investment in more regulation, supervision and enforcement, very bad things will happen that the regulators would otherwise have prevented. Mr. Barr's approach may be reasonably compared to that of former SEC Chair Gensler, while the…

There seems to be no logic to the sanctions that FINRA imposes on individual broker-dealer employees. How is it that the sanction in this case—the monetary penalty and the suspension—is barely more severe than the penalty imposed on a broker who costs elderly customers far more money?

Firms should warn their employees about a significant trend in enforcement actions against brokers failing to make proper disclosure of outside business activities.