Senator Elizabeth Warren complained that this bill would take power away from independent regulators and would give too much discretion to political appointees. The most significant issue of discretionary regulation, however, was created by Dodd-Frank itself, which provided for the formation of FSOC, and afforded FSOC the ability to declare that certain institutions were "systemically significant" under standards that are extremely open-ended and, subsequently, to regulate those…

The criticisms of Senators Warren and Sanders reflect a misunderstanding of the difference between the roles of leaders in the private sector and leaders in government. The role of leaders in the private sector is to make money within the rules; the role of leaders in government is to make good rules that benefit the country and its citizens. If the rules do not work to produce good results, then the focus of the government should be on fixing them, not complaining about those…

In terms of the substance of the rule requirements, the CFTC largely punted responsibility (and appropriately so) either to the banking regulators or to the SEC, both of which have significantly more expertise and staff to deal with these matters. It would have been messy for the CFTC and the SEC to take different approaches to capital requirements. Firms subject to regulation by both regulators would have been forced to comply with the more conservative set of rules in any case. In…

Maintaining a sensible financial regulatory system, in which businesses can operate freely without fearing regulatory attacks, becomes impossible when the rules are too complex to interpret. It is refreshing to hear the simple statement from the new nominee for Treasury Secretary that some of the rules we have now are just "too complicated"!