The purpose of cost-benefit analysis is to force the government to justify its regulations, to demonstrate that they provide benefit sufficient to justify their costs. In practice, it may not be easy to quantify the benefits of regulation; and while it should be somewhat easier to quantify costs, previous regulators often seemed somewhat lax as to their estimates, consistently low-balling costs.  

Under the Biden Administration, at least in the area of financial regulation,…

The diversity of events that may become contracts on prediction markets will make it very challenging to monitor insider trading. One important key, as likely was the case here, will be for each prediction market to identify big winners on unusual bets.  

It may also be necessary to rethink what it means to have inside information. In the instant case, the solder clearly owed an obligation to the US government not to use the information in the soldier's possession. But there will…

The Trade-through rule (which essentially requires that firms take-out the best bid on every single one of the very numerous stock exchanges before they execute a block in full) is lkely to be a key subject of the hearing.   

This case is significant because it was brought by the States, rather than by the SEC or FINRA. It is not the first enforcement action that the States have brought against firms that charged a fixed minimum commission. The minimum commission in this case was higher than in the two related cases. One question that remains is whether any minimum commission is acceptable. There ought be some reasonable minimum that would be ok, if fully disclosed, but it is not clear that is the case. …