What does this do to clearinghouse risk?

Both Chair Clayton and Commissioner Piwowar are sending a strong message that the SEC will be making a (welcome) return to its historical (and appropriate) focus on capital raising, corporate disclosures, investor protections and market structure. Politically motivated rulemakings will take a (hopefully) lower priority.

The most significant controversies created by FSOC resulted from its having named insurance companies, particularly MetLife, as systemically significant (). In this regard, one of the complaints directed at FSOC was that its members lacked sufficient experience in insurance to evaluate industry risks. This resulted, critics say, in a tendency to overstate such risks. Thus, Mr. Workman's views are likely to prove significant with regard to any decision by FSOC to name additional insurance…

Vice Chair Quarles raises reasonable concerns about how a virtual currency would perform in a time of stress. One specific worry – that a central bank would adopt digital currency – seems unlikely, given that the central bank would, thereby, lose control over its own currency. A more realistic concern is that fears of an unreliable central bank (think Venezuela) would motivate a population's movement away from use of that bank's currency.