Leaving aside the issue of whether the stay initiatives are good policy for the markets overall, the MFA raises two interesting questions: (i) are the regulators overreaching by (essentially) attempting to amend the U.S. Bankruptcy Code by regulatory fiat?; and (ii) are bank regulators' favoring the entities that they directly regulate (i.e., banks) over market participants generally (i.e., including the buy side). Neither the policy question, nor the questions as to the authority and the…

As a policy matter, protecting whistleblowers who report wrongdoing to the government but not those who report it internally would be a bad result.

The problem with the adoption of rules concerning things like position limit regulation is not merely that they are harmful in themselves. It is also that compliance with such rules drains private and public resources that could be put to better use. Given the CFTC's paucity of resources, is the adoption of position limit rules the best expenditure for the CFTC? Are those rules worth their toll on the economy?

The CFTC's refusal to revisit position limits regulation illustrates both…

The financial industry was not the focus of the study but is certainly relevant to it. The implications of the study are that we should expect more exits than entries, and that the industry itself will become more concentrated.