It seems odd for a regulatory agency to speak of its own "financial well-being" as if it were a person. The notion that the CFPB maintains its "financial well-being" without being dependent on funding from Congress is difficult to reconcile given the division of authority under the Constitution. If the CFPB can maintain not only its financial well-being but also its financial independence without any input from Congress, then why can't other Federal Agencies do the same?

As Vice Chair Fischer notes, banks (very correctly) dread showing any "signs of weakness." In the aftermath of Dodd-Frank, there was a sudden burst of enthusiasm for "transparency" and "fuller disclosure," as if absolute truth were a panacea. It is not. The opposite is sometimes true: too much disclosure of problems at a bank potentially can trigger a run on that bank (and a run on one bank may spread to others). Warning against the dangers of too much disclosure is not…

Chair Massad's priorities might be best considered in light of  that the CFTC and the EU finally, finally, finally, reached an agreement about the treatment of clearinghouses in their respective jurisdictions. That is, a substantial portion of the CFTC's priorities reflect the need to reduce the overreach of the prior CFTC administration (which the current Chair refers to either as "fine-tuning" or "helping end users") and correct procedural problems with the ways in…

Given their expanded responsibilities, there is no doubt that the federal financial regulatory agencies are poorly funded. The dispute over funding levels reflects ongoing tension between public policy and politics. How many of the current regulatory obligations are divorced from policy entirely? How much of the dispute is about good regulation and how much is devoted to the business of collecting fines?

It is difficult to understate the peculiarity of the notion contained in the…