Ms. Blass expresses support for both the concept of "full-service" brokerage, where broker-dealers are able to make recommendations to retail investors and be paid through trading commissions, and for the imposition of a higher duty on broker-dealers under newly proposed Regulation Best Interest. Two fundamental questions are: (i) how much time/money must a broker-dealer invest in learning about a client so that it would be in a position to satisfy its proposed best interest obligation, and…

The proposed NYDFS standard that a seller must understand fourteen different characteristics of the insurance buyer, and must take account of "all available, products, services and transactions," seems to set an unreachable bar. Is NYDFS really requiring that an insurance broker have information as to all available products, including those she does not offer, and then evaluate all of those available products against the customer’s fourteen suitability information characteristics?

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This is at least the second time that Commissioner Quintenz has pushed for cryptocurrency exchanges to establish a self-regulatory organization. This is unlikely to happen. For self-regulation to be really effective, the firms or exchanges that deem themselves to be compliant have to be able to "punish" the non-compliant firms in some way. When several firms gang up against another, that raises significant antitrust issues. Broker-dealers can do this in the securities markets because the…

Regulation NMS was adopted over two that were issued by SEC Commissioners Cynthia Glassman and Paul Atkins. The reasoning behind those dissents has been materially borne out. A reexamination of assumptions is in order.