The substance of the relief is notable, but so is CFTC staff's consideration of the "full plate" of new compliance burdens to which firms are subject. Clearly, a new administration is at work at the CFTC.

For a long time, the Resource Extraction Rule had been criticized by Republicans as inadequate to achieve its intended purpose and irrelevant to the mission of the SEC. See, e.g., .

This small exemptive action, which is not, of itself, terribly significant from a market perspective, is a great example of why the CFTC’s withdrawal of the historical exemption that SEC-registered investment companies had previously from regulation as a commodity pool was unwise. SEC-registered investment companies are astronomically regulated by the SEC. Adding an additional layer of CFTC regulation is just an expense to RICs and is a drain on the resources of the CFTC, which has…

One benefit of transitions is that they allow us to let go of the past. A preference for holding onto a failed theory is not unique to those in government. Indeed, one of the most famous works on the theory of knowledge and the course of scientific progress, Thomas Kuhn's "," deals with precisely this issue (see Emory University Professor Frank Pajares' ). If, after eight years of dedication to the proposition, proponents of position limits regulation could find no evidence that it…