At last, the CFTC is making meaningful progress in closing the regulatory rift between the United States and the European Union. Such progress is due to the persistence and determination of CFTC Chair Massad who managed to overcome his predecessor's vision of a Europe surrendering to the dominance of U.S. regulation – a vision that failed completely and proved to be a waste of time and energy.

It seems odd to give up on the notion of attempting to quantify the direct costs of regulation, notwithstanding the academics' view that the analysis of the Conflicts Mineral Rule was poorly done. The better approach would be for the SEC to try to understand what it did wrong (or right) in analyzing costs. After all, what reasonable business – or household, for that matter – would give up on the notion of estimating costs simply because it failed to do a good job in particular instances?…

Taken together, these speeches seem to be calling for regulatory supervisors to have greater authority with less responsibility. It is a call for greater power yet an attempt to pre-avoid blame in the event of market failure since "the ultimate responsibility for risk identification and risk management remains with the supervised institution." It is easy to be left with the impression that the regulators are not inclined toward self-criticism. In this regard, the worst that Mr. Hoenig can…

As Professor Pirrong observed in his recent blog post (see Related News), the Dodd-Frank clearing mandate has likely accelerated the merger of exchanges and clearing corporations. In an attempted framework to eliminate the possibility of institutions that are "too big to fail," Dodd-Frank instead has created a new kind of monopoly on an even bigger scale.

Did the regulators anticipate this? If they did, then they didn't let on. If they didn't, then perhaps they should…