Senator Warren's questions may be reasonable, but the manner in which she asks them is suspect. Might her demand letter be interpreted as a form of political intimidation?

According to FSOC, its review of asset managers focuses on "risks to financial stability rather than investment risk," which the report describes as a normal and necessary part of market functioning. By contrast, FSOC maintains, financial stability risk arises because the activities of individual market participants may affect the system more broadly, particularly during times of market stress.

Regardless of FSOC's distinction between the two kinds of risk, in the actual world, there…

Firms should be mindful of the extensive conditions imposed by the SEC on the purchase of fractional shares, particularly the SEC's disclosure requirement. In the long run, the adviser's Form ADV is probably the easiest place in which to make disclosures. For that reason, firms should update their forms accordingly.

Since Mr. Dudley is pondering the lack of growth in investment spending and whether the economy is going through a period of secular stagnation, the ideal question for him to ask might be this: are there regulations that are materially damaging to economic growth? New rules have imposed billions of dollars' worth of compliance and transactional costs. Many of those rules are not particularly sensible and a fair number are actually destructive. The time for regulators to exercise self-…