While the FSOC Report provides good general background on the state of various types of financial institutions; e.g., broker-dealers, credit companies and banks, as well as an overview of regulatory developments, it seems to be at least as much a political document as an analytic one. Very little is said regarding the reasons why FSOC's designation of an insurance company as "systemically important" was rejected by the court, or of the criticisms of the SEC's…

Mr. Barnett's comparison of banking and broker-dealer business models could be interpreted as an implicit challenge to some statements by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve and other senior banking regulators, that traditional broker-dealer activities like securities lending should be regulated similarly to bank lending. Mr. Barnett's observations on that subject recall earlier discussions of the differences between banking and securities dealing that were led by former SEC…

CFTC-regulated firms are not making short-term profits. Numerous futures commission merchants ("FCMs") have shut their doors already, which means their numbers have decreased significantly. The situation conjures John Maynard Keynes' famous quote: "In the long run, we are all dead" (or in the case of FCMs, shuttered).

Additionally, Commissioner Bowen's notion that the DOL's fiduciary standards are a model for the "standardization" of rules across regulatory agencies is arguable. One…

The questions raised by the SEC's approval of IEX's application are these: (i) how extensively should market rules be standardized, and regulations govern, where a trade is directed or executed, (ii) should investors and brokers be given more freedom to ignore disfavored markets, and (iii) how much latitude should markets have to make their own rules? Perhaps these questions should be answered before everyone is forced to comply with the requirements of Regulation NMS.

A …